Random Rants 79: [Impassionating Intensifies]

[hobbsyoyo]

They probably just want you out so they can raise the rent more than is reasonable. And have their eyes set on your security deposit.

I agree ****ery is afoot.

They have not been shy about raising my rent every year even when the building was half occupied. However, the California legislature is debating statewide rent control and this has sparked a rush to raise rents as high as possible and this may be their way of forcing me out so they can jack it even higher than they normally would for yearly lease renewal.

They also take everyone's deposit, no matter what. Every time someone moves out, they replace all the carpeting in the bedrooms with no exceptions regardless of its condition and take it out of the deposit. This is most likely illegal (as are pet deposits in California according to my googling, but they charged for that as well) but no one fights them over it. They charge over really petty stuff and it doesn't help that the flooring and paint are super-cheap quality. My faux-hardwood is a bit beat up from light use (it's not like I have kids or move furniture or anything) and the walls scoff heavily if you look at them wrong.

Irvine Company is both the best and the worst.

I'm super pissed because there's a good possibility I will get work soon from some leads I've been working that meant I could stay put. Only now I have to move, for stupid reasons that are a transparent cash grab. We're trying to have a kid and this is the perfect place to do it as well.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm trying to read a fanfic but...it's really difficult. It's like the author was flipping through a word-of-the-day calendar and seeing if they could shove every one of them into a single paragraph.

You've got more patience than I would. If something doesn't grab my interest by the end of the first chapter, I move on. I move on even faster if it's not properly formatted. At the very least, I expect the author to know how to punctuate dialogue and that every time you change the speaker, you need a new paragraph.

Well, it is a fanfic.

Thanks a lot. It's not all crap, y'know. While I won't claim that most of my first-draft novels are presentable enough to post for the public, I do go back and fix things. Some of what Aimee and I have encountered are authors who don't bother cleaning up their first drafts, and can't think why they might want to run the story past a beta reader, to have a fresh set of eyes to spot errors.

 

[Takhisis]

Valka, I'll just say that my comment, as so many you have chosen to take offence at recently, was not aimed personally at you.

For those not getting the reference, the Conan stories, for really low-brow fantasy, has a higher concentration of obscure early modern era words you'll never encounter outside of a university English literature program that anything you'll ever see outside of, well, a university English literature program.

I keep that kind of book sometimes precisely for that type of value.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Valka, I'll just say that my comment, as so many you have chosen to take offence at recently, was not aimed personally at you.

Okay, this is why I take offense. You made a disparaging comment about fanfic, implying that all fanfic is poor quality.

You know I write fanfic. I've been very open about that, and have posted a little of it at IALS. I don't appreciate a blanket dismissal of a form of writing you know I'm extremely involved in, and that I've put in a great deal of effort to produce results and improve my skills.

You might not have intended to aim your comment personally at me, but that's not what it feels like. It does feel personal.

I don't say there isn't a lot of bad fanfic around. I've written some of it myself, and am thankful that nobody else will ever see it. But my skills have improved in the past 40 years. There are other people who are very talented writers, who do it for fun, to add to the body of stories about whatever setting they write about.

 

[cardgame]

Like anime, 95% (give or take) of fanfic is absolute dumpster-fire trash. Even if you are fully immersed in the fandom you probably think 80% of it is garbage, the rest is tolerable to good specifically and only because of the overlap of previously-established interests, characters, settings, arcs, etc.

Fun? Sure. Good? Very rarely. I absolutely freaking love at least a dozen or so MLP fanfics, but I'd only recommend two or three of them to out-of-the-loop folks, and once again, that's only because of the crossover potential (ksp, fallout, and AI sci-fi, respectively). There might be a couple other good pieces that actually can stand on their own, but I'm too biased to make that judgment and I definitely don't want to recommend cringe, which is what would happen if those stories fell into the ~15% gap.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Like anime, 95% (give or take) of fanfic is absolute dumpster-fire trash. Even if you are fully immersed in the fandom you probably think 80% of it is garbage, the rest is tolerable to good specifically and only because of the overlap of previously-established interests, characters, settings, arcs, etc.

Fun? Sure. Good? Very rarely. I absolutely freaking love at least a dozen or so MLP fanfics, but I'd only recommend two or three of them to out-of-the-loop folks, and once again, that's only because of the crossover potential (ksp, fallout, and AI sci-fi, respectively). There might be a couple other good pieces that actually can stand on their own, but I'm too biased to make that judgment and I definitely don't want to recommend cringe, which is what would happen if those stories fell into the ~15% gap.

Then I guess I've been spoiled by being able to find a lot of good stuff. And that's just online. I have an entire very large bookshelf that holds most of my collection of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Highlander, Robin of Sherwood, Darkover, Xena: Warrior Princess, and other fanzines from the '60s-'90s. There are volumes of filk music (one of which I wrote myself) and some 'zines that contain comics that (gasp!) don't depend on smut, cursing, or other gutter-level images or language for their humor.

I know there's bad fanfic out there. But there's so much that's good, out of the literally millions of stories people have written.

Gotta go work on my own story now.

 

[rah]

Like anime, 95% (give or take) of fanfic is absolute dumpster-fire trash. Even if you are fully immersed in the fandom you probably think 80% of it is garbage, the rest is tolerable to good specifically and only because of the overlap of previously-established interests, characters, settings, arcs, etc.

Yeah, have to agree. If 10% of it is good, you're lucky. Having never read Valka's, I won't judge hers, but they let anybody write it and the result is usually not readable.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

There's a lot of fanfics though, so even if just 5 or 10% is good, that's still a lot of good fanfics.

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to find the ones that seem okay at first glance but turn out to be pretty awful.

 

[Takhisis]

You might not have intended to aim your comment personally at me, but that's not what it feels like. It does feel personal.

Yes, and this is not the first time you've done this recently. Comments are made, not aimed at you, but at other people specifically or generally, and you specifically choose to misinterpret them as being personal slurs. Don't you remember that I also write things, and every now and then I despair at my own efforts?

 

[Synobun]

"Every now and then I despair"

Is that a personal slight directed at me, Takh?

 

[rah]

There's a lot of fanfics though, so even if just 5 or 10% is good, that's still a lot of good fanfics.

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to find the ones that seem okay at first glance but turn out to be pretty awful.

But I like a better rate of readable.
Now if it just said on the first page, this sucks, that would help, but lacking that, Fanfics is my substitute for that. I read enough bad books.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes, and this is not the first time you've done this recently. Comments are made, not aimed at you, but at other people specifically or generally, and you specifically choose to misinterpret them as being personal slurs. Don't you remember that I also write things, and every now and then I despair at my own efforts?

When have I posted anything that is even obliquely disparaging of your creative writing efforts? I've criticized my own efforts negatively (as you'd see if you read either my own threads or Zkribbler's thread in A&E), but in my case I'm talking about specific things, not the genre as a whole.

You denigrated the genre on which I choose to focus a considerable amount of my creative efforts. You know I have a great deal of time and effort invested in this. How could I not take your comment as a slur? If you don't include me in your "fanfic is crap" attitude, you should have made that clear from the get-go. There are times when the word "some" can save a lot of trouble.

SOME fanfic is not very good at all (same as pro fiction). But as a genre in general, it's not deserving of the dismissive attitude you showed.

FYI: If you have a problem with my posts, you are not obligated to read them.

But I like a better rate of readable.
Now if it just said on the first page, this sucks, that would help, but lacking that, Fanfics is my substitute for that. I read enough bad books.

I once saw a fanfic someone wrote as their version of "Dune 7" - their interpretation of how Frank Herbert might have finished the series. I wish I'd saved it, since it was on a Geocities site and is probably lost forever. But I do remember that it was quite good, far superior to the crap KJA/BH wrote. There wasn't one killer robot mentioned at all. There were some creepy Face Dancers, which is exactly what FH was writing about.

 

[Takhisis]

"Every now and then I despair"

Is that a personal slight directed at me, Takh?

Are you leaving it up to my choice?

 

[rah]

I once saw a fanfic someone wrote as their version of "Dune 7" - their interpretation of how Frank Herbert might have finished the series. I wish I'd saved it, since it was on a Geocities site and is probably lost forever. But I do remember that it was quite good, far superior to the crap KJA/BH wrote. There wasn't one killer robot mentioned at all. There were some creepy Face Dancers, which is exactly what FH was writing about.

Saying you once saw is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the overall quality of fanfic.
I've gone to many conventions and can probably count on one hand the number of good fanfics that I read. Which is why I don't read it anymore.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Saying you once saw is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the overall quality of fanfic.
I've gone to many conventions and can probably count on one hand the number of good fanfics that I read. Which is why I don't read it anymore.

I saw it once. I read it. I thought it was quite good. It was a ringing endorsement of that particular story, which is part of the genre called "fanfiction".

I have no idea WTH this has to do with going to conventions. And you are intentionally depriving yourself of the opportunity to discover some excellent stories about whatever fandoms you're interested in.

Back in the late '70s I read a book called Star Trek Lives! and there was a chapter dedicated to discussing Star Trek fanfiction. It was intriguing that so many people had written stories, poems, songs, created artwork, and I remember feeling left out. This was years before I attended any science fiction conventions, and in fact the first fanfic I ever read was acquired by mail order. This was back in the day when there was no internet, and if you wanted fanfic, you either had to buy or trade fanzines or stories, either by snailmail or at conventions (if you were lucky; there was one convention where Paramount suits raided the dealers' room and confiscated all the fanzines they could find).

A local fan had some addresses for mail order, so I decided to take a chance. I have every issue of In A Different Reality, and some of the people who wrote those stories are still writing, 40 YEARS LATER. I've been collecting old print 'zines for some years now (thanks, eBay), and although a lot of the old stories are online now, they don't include the poetry and artwork that were also part of these fanzines. IADR was just the first of many titles.

If you want to disparage fanfic, read some of the articles on Fanlore.org and get back to me. It's a huge part of fandom - many fandoms - and while some of it isn't that well written, there's a hell of a lot that is.

Fanfic is why I roll my eyes at how "edgy" DiscoTrek boasts it is. Newsflash to the producers: It's not "edgy" for Sarek to have a human foster-daughter. People were writing fanfic about that over 45 years ago. I very likely have some of those stories in my collection just a couple of rooms away from where I'm sitting right now.

 

[rah]

I have no idea WTH this has to do with going to conventions. And you are intentionally depriving yourself of the opportunity to discover some excellent stories about whatever fandoms you're interested in.

What conventions did you attend? There was always a lot of fan fic at conventions. You didn't usually see it at main stream book stores. That's WTH it has to do with it.
And Yes I am intentionally depriving myself because I don't want to have to wade through all the garbage to find the hidden gem.

 

[tjs282]

Rant 1:

I just discovered yesterday evening that Project Gutenburg has blocked access by everyone with a Germany-based IP address:

http://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml

I read that page and got steaming angry.

Rant 2:

In the hope of re-assembling the frame to an old fabric wardrobe for which we no longer seem to have the original bolts, I went to the hardware store a couple of days ago to buy some replacements. But before I did that, I carefully measured the depth of the (fitted) sockets and tested them with some bolts I had lying around the house. The standard M6 shaft-diameter was just a little too wide, so I bought M5 bolts instead — which turned out to be too narrow to engage the socket threads. Obviously the original bolts were some proprietary size specific to that wardrobe, so I'm going to have to drill and screw the frame-pieces back together after all...

Rant 3:

We have had a small rodent living in our toolshed for a month or two now, so while I was at the hardware store, I also bought a (so-called) 'humane' mousetrap: the long wire-box type with a spring-loaded door at the open end. I set it up the same evening I bought it, and have been checking it every 12 hours or so since then. When we checked it this morning, it contained a very bedraggled-looking shrew. Although it had no obvious injuries, the floor of the trap was nonetheless smeared with blood (and excreta, obviously) from one end to the other — not sure if it had been trying to dig/chew its way out. It was still moving weakly when I went to release it in a field just down the road (on my way to work), but even though it was (now) huddled at the trap-door end, I eventually had to tip the trap up to about 45° to get it to slide out. It immediately rolled onto its back, curled up with its legs in the air. Don't think it was playing possum.

So much for 'humane' catch-and-release, should have just bought a neck-snapper...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What conventions did you attend? There was always a lot of fan fic at conventions. You didn't usually see it at main stream book stores. That's WTH it has to do with it.
And Yes I am intentionally depriving myself because I don't want to have to wade through all the garbage to find the hidden gem.

I am well aware that most fanfic isn't seen in mainstream bookstores. I did find an issue of Vault of the Ages on Amazon one time - good thing, since some of those are hard to find at a reasonable price.

As for what conventions I've attended and the likelihood of finding fanfic there, take a look at your location and then take a look at mine. You're in a major city where the conventions are HUGE compared to the small city I live in and the cities where I attended conventions (Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, and Banff).

How many actors have been the guests at the conventions you've attended? Probably lots. The only time I ever attended fan events that included actors weren't even real conventions (George Takei/Calgary/1979; Sylvester McCoy/Spokane/1987). The actual conventions I attended had author guests, editor guests, and one time they invited the creator of Babylon 5 (can't ever remember how to spell his name). Only once during these years did I ever find fanzines in the dealers' room. Another year I found a couple of flyers on the freebie table, which is how I got a one of the addresses to write to, to order by snailmail. And keep in mind that this was at a time when the exchange rate between Canada and the U.S. was horrendous. Inquiries to even find out the cost of the 'zine required a letter and SASE (can't buy American stamps at a Canadian post office, so that necessitated an expensive International Reply Coupon). Then later, I'd get an answer and would have to make yet another trip to the post office for a money order. Eventually the 'zine would come in the mail. I remember my grandmother worrying that a package labeled "Intergalactic Underground Press" (the name chosen by the fans who wrote and published IADR) would get me into trouble. I remember being amazed that one of the adult-rated issues even made it over the border; there are people in the customs office whose job is to stop "indecent" material from getting into the country.

Once I got online and learned about eBay, I was able to add to my collection very quickly. There are other sites to get this stuff as well, and the largest impediment these days is the insane shipping charges between our two countries. Thankfully the stories published by Orion Press are available online, since I knew I wouldn't be able to afford to buy the physical 'zines.

As for separating the good stuff from the bad stuff, that's why Fanlore.org is invaluable. I've used the reviews and comments and excerpts to help guide me in deciding what to add to the collection. It's easy enough to use filters on the larger fanfic sites. If you like stories with particular characters, just enter them into the filter and a list of stories featuring those characters will come up. From there you can filter according to the rating (don't like same-sex relationships? Filter them out), or you can separate completed stories from works-in-progress or works that have been abandoned. After that, it's simple to skim the first chapter or so to see if you're interested enough to read further. If so, great. If not, you haven't lost that much time.

But if you never bother to look, of course you won't find the good stuff. And keep in mind that fanfic can be for any genre or type of media. My stories involve book fandom, RPG gamebook fandom, and computer game fandom. Y'know what one of my favorite types of fanfic is? Bonanza. I won't ever find Bonanza fanzines, and considering that everyone who was ever a main character or even secondary character on that show is dead, there aren't a lot of Bonanza conventions around. But there are a lot of talented writers for that fandom who create stories and series that I've followed for several years.

Rant 1:

I just discovered yesterday evening that Project Gutenburg has blocked access by everyone with a Germany-based IP address:

http://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml

I read that page and got steaming angry.

What is on that site that the German authorities don't want you to read?

 

[tjs282]

What is on that site that the German authorities don't want you to read?

Could you not open the hyperlink? PG has not been blocked by order of the German authorities, PG did it themselves.

The TLDR (as I understand it) is that the PG staff are currently appealing the verdict on a civil court case brought against them by a German publisher (actually a global publishing conglomerate, which also owns e.g. MacMillan), in a German court, with respect to (alleged) copyright-infringement on the texts of 18 books, written by 3 long-dead German authors (including Thomas Mann), for which the US copyright has long-since expired, putting those works into the public domain in the USA (but apparently not in Germany, at least according to the German publisher's claim).

The court ruled against the publisher's demand that those 18 texts should be removed from PG altogether, but did rule that they be made unavailable for download by German PG-users (i.e. effectively, that German copyright law should apply to a website which is not based in Germany/Europe, nor staffed by German/European citizens, and whose content is primarily in languages other than German).

However, PG's position is that no court inside or outside the USA should be allowed to assume (by precedent) the legal power to demand that PG remove (or block) any (US) public-domain works from its shelves, at the whim of any publisher with the resources to pursue such (frivolous) cases — hence their appeal. But until that appeal has been ruled on, they have blocked Germany as a precaution, to avoid prejudicing their case.

I suspect that PG-staff are hoping that German PG-users will rise up en masse to demand that the current court-ruling be overturned, and the case dismissed.

It immediately rolled onto its back, curled up with its legs in the air. Don't think it was playing possum.

So, I just looked up 'Eurasian shrew' on Wiki. Apparently, their metabolic rate is so high that they have to eat every 2-3 hours or they'll starve.

Also, assuming that we had a mouse, I'd baited the trap with sunflower seeds, but shrews are carnivorous and insectivorous, not seed-eaters (and not rodents either, I was surprised to learn). So even it didn't die of shock or hypothermia, any more than 3 hours in a trap would likely have killed it anyway.

Damn, now I feel really bad.

 

[Lexicus]

Rant 1:

I just discovered yesterday evening that Project Gutenburg has blocked access by everyone with a Germany-based IP address:

http://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml

I read that page and got steaming angry.

Hella annoying but I think I'll be reading Der Untertan if they've got it in English translation...