mardi, juin 27, 2006 CharityWank: MsScribe, FermatoJam, CharlotteLennox and Bad_Penny I've been following, with morbid fascination, a sudden eruption in the Harry Potter fanfiction community. (Fanficion: stories written by people using the characters from a book/ movie/ play/ cartoon etc)A lot of fiction is being written and archived on livejournal, instead of on the usual places like fanfiction.net, simplyundeniable, checkmated, or fictionalley (amongst others). This is due to the various levels of filters (or checks and balances) that each website community imposes on its authors. Some examples of filters include things like: 1) not archiving fiction which does not adhere to 'canon' information and pairings (e.g. Harry-Hermione romance fictions will not be archived); 2) not archivingfiction which does not adhere to certain pairings (e.g. Portkey does not archive anything with Harry-Ginny, or Ron-Hermione, as it is a pro-Harry-Hermione site. Ron gets paired with Luna.) 3) not archiving fiction with less than 1000 words; 4) requiring all authors to submit their stories to be 'beta-ed', or checked over by an author before it is archived (basically an approval system), 5) not archiving fiction above or below the NC-17 rating (e.g. fanfiction.net doesn't accept anything NC-17, prompting another site to spring up in protest, archiving ONLY NC-17 fiction.) 6) you get the idea. Anyway, the fanfiction community is large, and the Harry Potter fanfiction community is gigantinormous. Pairing-preference is political allegiance in this community: just like the Democrats and the Republicans are never going to agree on certain issues, and the Tories and Labour are always going to be at loggerheads, so the "orange-crush"-ers (Ron-Hermione) and "good-ship"ers (Harry-Ginny) disagree fundamentally with the "ashwinders" (Snape-Hermione) and the whoever-else-ers. It's this that creates interesting tensions within the community. But it's all in fun and jest... mostly. What happens when mental instability and sheer diabolical genious meet the Harry Potter fanfiction community? Welcome to CharityGate. The basics: there was this woman, Dionne (real name), who wanted to play with the "in" kids over at Fiction Alley. (There's a whole bunch of other political site-rivary that I won't bother with, but you can read it on charlottelennox's amazing history of CharityWank.) She creates her profile, called msscribe, on livejournal, then creates what is called a "sockpuppet" to "fangirl" herself. What this means is that she created a fake identity to tell HERSELF that she was great, and that she should write more fiction, and that she's the best thing since sliced bread and that she wants to marry her and have her children, etc. She created about a zillion of these sockpuppet journal identities, and succeeded in stirring up many hornets' nests on many issues. She did this by artifically creating crises: having SOME of her sockpuppets take on the personas of Religious Fanatics, condemning NC-17 sites, or having SOME of her OTHER sockpuppets (get the idea that she's got MANY?) condemn HER msscribe writing. This was all done so that other REAL people would jump to her defence, and say that msscribe's writing isn't bad, that she is great, and basically give her a lot of time and sympathy etc. To cut a long story short, she really was made a moderator (a BIG THING in a large community like the HP one) within a very short time, and she still contined to manipulate people with her sockpuppets. charlottelennox has pretty much cleared everything up, along with some other stories from other perspectives, but everything I've read so far (and there's a fair bit of real detective work going on behind the scenes) points to msscribe being an absolute tool with her friends. She lied about EVERYTHING, from who she was to what she did to who she hung out with... she told everyone that she was sick and travelling and a huge PR/Media executive, and also a mother etc etc. Nobody knows where the lies end and the truth begins anymore. The diabolical liar in her also said that she had pressed charges against a student, Louis Movello, a student in the University of Dayton, for stalking and threatening her I think. UD people did cross-checking with the University, as well as the state/region/town police, and there was NOTHING. No such person even exists, much less charged with anything. There are spin-offs from the Amazing History, of course, with mikkeneko's "The Woman Who Sued Herself" (as in, Mary-Sue-d" herself) is a brilliant summary read of everything, and bad_penny is keeping an eye on EVERYTHING. I don't think many people will be very interested in this, but as someone who has been in fandom for a while (started waaaay back with X-Files in 1995?), this is a fascinating event in the HP fandom. I'm also writing this as a sort of record, because this really is a rather huge event in the HP ff community. But it's a subculture (of fanfiction writing) within the larger subculture of Potterheads, so it's really hard to understand if you're not in it. Sorry if you've read so far and feel unfulfilled. :) Oh, and Michelle, this is for you:  Libellés : harry potter [CharityWank: MsScribe, FermatoJam, CharlotteLennox and Bad_Penny] |
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