Friday, December 31, 2004
"All is Quiet -- on New Year's (Eve)"
Open thread. Consider this the equivalent of Rick's Place in the movie Casablanca . Announcements, plans, questions go in the comments section. I'll be back in a couple of days -- off to see my dear old Mom. (You thought I was too mean to have one, didn't you?)
Beta Readers, New Works, Trek
renfield1969 is running programming at Farpoint, a Star Trek convention in Hunt Valley, Maryland from February 11 through 13th, 2005.
The Angst Guy is calling for beta readers for "Pause in the Air #8".
thea-zara posted two sequels to "A Fateful Holiday" -- one is "New Year's Under The Stars", the other is "Resolutions". Both can be found on PPMB.
Angelinhel's "A Broken Night" was posted on TDJC.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Fanfic Award Categories from Yore
In the public interest, here is the list of fanfiction categories from previous Canadibrit Fan Fiction Awards :
Favorite Overall Fan Fiction
(Should just be renamed, "Best Story".)
Favorite Daria/Trent Shipper Fic
Favorite Daria/Tom Shipper Fic
(This was formerly called the "Best 'Shipper Fic'": Ms. Neilson noted that when she split the awards, there weren't enough D/Tom relationshippers to give an award. I suggest the title be renamed, "Best Daria Romance Fic" -- the requirement is that Daria be in WUV with some other character, Trent, Tom, whoever.)
Favorite Homosexual Shipper Fic
(A more recent award. This should just be renamed "Best Slash", which would cover all categories, male, female, tame, and explict.)
Continuum Award
(A good idea, for best maintainence of a continuum or best new continuum.)
Favorite Tear-Jerker
(Maybe "Best Angst Fic")
Favorite Knee-Slapper
(Maybe "Best Humor Fic")
Favorite Crossover Parody
(Should just be renamed, "Best Crossover" -- not all crossovers are parodies.)
Favorite Holiday Special
(No problem.)
Favorite New Character
(No problem.)
Most Believable Portrayal of Character
(Maybe it should just be named "Best Canon Fic".)
Title Pun Award
(I would recommend against this, but it would fall on deaf ears.)
Best Young Author
(Should be renamed "Best New Author")
There should also be a "Best Erotic Fic" category as well, minimum, which deals with explicit romance.
John Takis is a Dirty Old Pro!
John Takis will have a story published in Strange New Worlds VII , a collection of short stories published in the Star Trek universe. He has been published earlier in Strange New Worlds III and Strange New Worlds V . He is now ineligible to be published in further Strange New Worlds collections. Furthermore, he would now be considered a professional by most publishers.
He is also now considered to be eligible for membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America . Congratulations, Mr. Takis.
The Angst Guy nominates a story as one which is "Most Deserving To Be Sent to Daria Fanfic Websites". The story, a response to an Iron Chef, can be found on this Paperpusher thread . It was written by "et alia".
Richard Lobinske finished "Falling Into College 24 -- Silver Lining".
More Daria superhero art was posted by "mman" on the PPMB (Daria as Vampirella, Sandi as Catwoman).
An interesting thread in "Flame Wars" on the Sheep's Fluff concerns fanfiction and the sometimes poor and repetitive quality of reader feedback. Definitely a recommended read.
Don-O is enjoying his vacation in New Orleans.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Nothing Doing
Richard Lobinske posted "First Leave", a crossover with Guy Payne's story, "Tallil".
I will be away from the computer for most of Friday, December 31st and part of January 1st -- visiting family. So there will be no updates -- I might create an open thread or ask someone if they want to take up posting chores.
Slashing
As it turns out, I SHALL be following The Daria-Jane Conspiracy...although not through any effort on anyone else's part.
It appears that the only thing a login is useful for is for posting fan fiction, which is something I don't plan to do. The actual FORUMS at TDJC, however, are hidden at the left, under "Daria Slash Forums".
The first time I saw that, I thought "Daria slash" forums, or "forums for Daria slash". For the few people that don't know what "slash" is, it's genre fiction involving two male characters getting it on (Kirk/Spock). The meaning has been generally expanded to ANY two characters of the same sex getting it on.
Certainly, there's a lot of Daria slash out there, but as it turns out, TDJCs forums haven't mentioned Daria slash even once! I'm disappointed! As Inigo Montoya of "The Princess Bride" might say, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means."
Hosting
Daria fans would like to remind people that there is an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel called #daria+, where you can find a few of the Daria fans who meet regularly online. You need the IRC program or some kind of Applet that can run chat type programs. The server is kechara.sorcery.net (or, irc.sorcery.net).
Mike Yamiolkoski's Daria Online Character Database is likely to move to "Kemical Reaxion's" Glitter Berries site.
"sleepless" posted Chapter 16 of "Yuki-Onna".
The Angst Guy posted "Nine Point Oh" in response to "thea-zara's" request for posts about what Daria characters are doing for New Year's Eve.
Richard Lobinski posted Part 6 of "Falling Into College 24 -- Silver Lining".
"Deceleraptor" posted a prequel to "Kadhimiya" for "thea-zara's" request for posts about what Daria characters are doing for Christmas.
Huge batches of Daria fan fiction are being posted at The Daria-Jane Conspiracy. Most of these are not new works; an effort is being made to establish a library of Daria fan fiction works there.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
New Installment of "Estrangesters" by Ostragoth; Why I Don't Monitor TDJC
Ostragoth has posted another installment of "Estrangesters" at the SF.
You might (or might not) have noticed that I'm not updating The Daria-Jane Conspiracy's recent submissions. This is not because I don't think TDJC is important, or because I bear some grudge against the operator, "Dr. Mike". Rather, I can't assess the site without dropping my firewall. Work has a firewall, so no reading there, and as for the home computers, I just don't want to mess with it.
Either someone can apply for posting privileges, or someone can create a phony account for me through which I can assess TDJC. Else, silence from that front.
Daria-Jane Conspiracy Functional Update
From "Dr. Mike" at The Daria-Jane Conspiracy : the conspiracy is now searchable for those of you using Mozilla's Firefox browser. One will have to do some downloading and unzipping first, though.
"ahmygoddess" points us to this website . If you look at the signs, "ahmygoddess" is the one who mixes that paint for all of that vibrant-looking advertising.
Richard Lobinske has posted Part 5 of "Falling Into College 24 - Silver Lining".
Monday, December 27, 2004
"Thirteenth Man" Concludes; News from the "Hot Corner"
"Gregor Samsa" posted part 3 of "The Bands of Summer".
The Angst Guy concluded "The Thirteenth Man".
"Dervish" is in a dispute with the other posters over at "Nick's Corner" at PPMB. Dervish posted a link which claimed that a Catholic orphanage allowed its charges to be forcibly medicated, and felt that part of the blame should go to the Church. Father Martin Sylvester thought it was quite unfair for the Church to be blamed for the actions of a few, and other posters wrote that Dervish seemed to have a grudge against the Catholic church in particular and Christianity in general. Dervish denies that, stating that those complaining are hypersensitive.
Kristen Bealer stated that such heated argument is one of the reasons she might not be reading "Nick's Corner" much anymore, and offered to discuss the matter with Dervish through private messages.
Sunday, December 26, 2004
PPMB Back Up
Rich was finally alerted of the problems with PPMB. According to Kara Wild, Rich hasn't really been in contact with anyone in fandom in several months. Rich plans on pursuing his Ph. D.
"Gregor Samsa" posted two parts of "The Bands of Summer".
The Angst Guy posted "The Thirteenth Man, Chapter 5".
Richard Lobinske posted some observations on fandom output in terms of original stories.
First, the output of stories over the last four years on Outpost Daria:
2001: approximately 280
2002: approximately 190
2003: approximately 190
2004: approximately 180
And at Fanfiction.net:
2001: 218
2002: 153
2003: 176
2004: 91
"Deref" posted his three best erotica stories of 2004:
--"The Winters of Those Gone Before", by Gerald Wright (Brother Grimace)
--"Girls' Night Out" by "Roentgen" (unfinished)
--"Experimentation, OR 'What Happened After Daria and Tom Went Upstairs'", by "Greystar".
Don-O is off to New Orleans.
Crossada's birthday is in 18 days.
On "Best of Year" Compilations
My thought on best of year compilations is that for the most part, they're okay. Janet Neilson (Canadibrit) used to do a Canadibrit Fan Fiction Awards from around 1999 to 2001 -- the categories are fairly extensive and I don't think such an exhaustive listing could be done today. I don't know if any of them were done after that, but I thought (and still do think) that it's bad form to list yourself as a winner of an award when you're the one counting the votes, or asking other people to vote or nominate somebody. (Ed. Note -- We are not making any statements about the value of Ms. Neilson's work in this post, nor are we implying that Ms. Neilson was jockeying for votes -- she ran the contest for two years, on her own time and clearly put a lot of work into it.)
Now before you set phasers to kill, hear me out. The problem with any official "Best of Year/Season/Month" compilation is that IF the person operating it is also writing fan fiction, people are going to naturally want to nominate that person's work. People naturally want other people to feel good about themselves, and the mere act of sending in a vote jogs the memory in a skewed way. If Steven Galloway ran such a contest, he'd get a lot of votes for "Visitations" or one of his other series. It's just human nature. Besides, people might feel that Mr. Galloway's feelings might be hurt if they didn't consider his series particularly noteworthy, and definitely if they said great things about "Visitiations" in public. (Ed. Note -- We are not making any statements about the value of "Visitiations" in this post.)
Infrequent posts about "Best of 200x" are okay, but I hope that they don't become a semi-official thing, lest fans start jockeying for position the way they always do. If fans HAVE to have recognition, they can wait for another "Spotlight On..." feature from Mr. Galloway.
As for Wouter's new picture, I'll say two things:
a) my opinion about his writing is unchanged, and
b) damn, that bastard sure can draw. I'd almost be tempted to trade my writing skill for his art talent, and think that I'd get the better of the deal.
Updates at Sheep's Fluff, Downages at PPMB
Major downages at the Paperpusher Message Board. The board has been up and down more times than a yo-yo. The most recent message is that the account has been suspended. Hopefully, this is merely a glitch in Daria fandom's major message board.
Richard Lobinske states that he's still working on his "current series", and recently posted "Falling into College 24 -- Silver Lining, Parts 1-3" on Sheep's Fluff.
A long discussion on PPMB (before it disappeared) on noteworthy stories in 2004. Richard Lobinske stated that he thought the Best Comic Inspired Story is Ranger Thorne's "Daria's Web". The Angst Guy's Funniest Story of 2004 was Kristen Bealer's "The Idiocy", a take off of Homer's Iliad done by the Daria cast.
Wouter Jaegers posted his annual Daria Christmas illustration. It can be found at Sheep's Fluff and elsewhere.
Updates at Sheep's Fluff:
--The Christmas Page
--Richard Lobinske, Gerald Wright (Brother Grimace), The Angst Guy
--Reader's Rack updated in the NC17 "Dungeon" section : the most noteworthy of these updates being the addition of Brother Grimace's "The Winters of Those Gone Before", a sequel to LyinTamer's controversial, "Night of the Storm".
Test Blog
This might end up being the new Scorched Remnants Blog. Then again, it might not.
Diana Rajchel once thought that what Daria fandom needed was a blog of its own, for writers to discuss whatever was or should be going on in Daria fandom. For right now, this blog is going to be more or less a message board update of the big two (Paperpusher and Sheep's Fluff) and the significantly smaller one (the old Scorched Remants Message Board).
The idea: "We read the Daria message boards, so YOU don't have to!"
Haloscan functionality added later, et. al.
Diana Rajchel once thought that what Daria fandom needed was a blog of its own, for writers to discuss whatever was or should be going on in Daria fandom. For right now, this blog is going to be more or less a message board update of the big two (Paperpusher and Sheep's Fluff) and the significantly smaller one (the old Scorched Remants Message Board).
The idea: "We read the Daria message boards, so YOU don't have to!"
Haloscan functionality added later, et. al.
