Thalia [Contact]

Real name: Thalia
Registered: May 06, 2004
Membership status: Member

College student. Multitasking fiend. Ficaholic. What else do you need to know?

Ehh... I suppose I'll provide a bit more information about myself. I'm currently working fifty bazillion hours a week somewhere in the United States of America, and constantly pile too much on my plate because I have a God complex and can't function unless I'm working my butt off on five things at once. I've been in the Harry Potter fandom for several years, and most of my pet ships are of minor canon characters. Draco/Ginny is probably one of the only "major" character ships that I really like, probably due to the fact that most of the others either make no sense to me based on characterization or have a deplorable lack of fic that doesn't make me gag.

I freely admit to writing far more fic than I read, due to time constraints which make it impractical to attempt to locate the pieces of goodfic floating in the overwhelming quagmire of badfic.

I'm a bit of a ruthless canon Nazi and characterization whore, which might or might not come into play during Cabal rounds, but I would like to think that I am fair about that!

To simplify, ten rules:

Seven things to avoid when writing fic...

1) Canon rape. If Ginny's going to dye her hair black and make herself look like Morticia Addams, all while listening to Slipknot and smoking cloves, there damn well better be a good, believable reason for it, no matter how much the author considers that a valid lifestyle.

2) Mary Sues. This one is quite simple, and related to the above. If someone spends more time describing Draco's luscious, sunshine-on-frost platinum blond locks, which has the texture of watered silk and whatever the hell--- than on, say, actual content, I will start laughing or crying, depending on my mood. Same goes for random characters becoming metamorphmagi, using wandless magic, finding long-lost relatives, and those sorts of things.

3) Usage errors. You know, there/they're/their, loose/lose, breath/breathe, its/it's, taut/taught, etc. Same goes for misused apostrophes, which is often related. This is basic grammar that a good beta reader should catch.

4) Zabini rule violation. PLEASE spell and capitalize canon terminology and canon names as they are supposed to be! Anyone who's read the books closely (and if not, why are you writing fanfiction?) should be able to do this without much difficulty.

5) Netspeak and inappropriate slang/abbreviations. In NO case is "LOL" ever appropriate in a fic. Same goes for "gtg", "brb", etc. Also, seeing as to how this is Harry Potter and set in the UK, it is not very likely that any of the characters would be using American slang frequently. "Holy sh!t, Draco! That was a SWEET move on your broom!" would never come out of canon Ginny's mouth. Stuff like "dontcha get it?" will serve only to annoy me.

6) In-text Author's Notes. Confine them to the start and end of fics. The fic should be able to explain itself, without help from the peanut gallery. If it isn't, work on your exposition, or have more faith in the intelligence of your readers. They break the flow and serve as distractions, and don't really do anything but annoy readers.

7) Plagiarism. This should go without saying. If it is not yours, you should be crediting who/what inspired you. Imitation is NOT always the sincerest form of flattery, and it's offensive and disheartening when someone rips off someone else's hard work. If you're not creative enough to come up with your own stuff, stop writing until you are. I am so not joking about that.

Three Reviewer Etiquette No-Nos

1) Vendetta flames are OUT. If someone criticizes your fic and makes valid points, it only makes you look silly and immature if you go and bash his/her fic in return.

2) Ship flames are OUT. A person is entitled to ship however they want, and in most cases, it's all but impossible to make diehard shippers switch shippers. Just don't even try, because you'll just seem like a troll. I don't agree with Draco/Hermione and likely never will, but I don't go around bashing that ship or its shippers for no reason. It will NOT make anyone look superior. A better solution would be to find a shipper who writes what you like and to read the fics he or she writes. You can always just not read fics with ships you don't like. A few places online are havens for mocking, but most places are not. If you feel the need to spew the vitriol, visit the Deleterius community on livejournal. As for this site, anyone who bashes D/G or rants about how "uncanonical" or whatever it is should be slapped repeatedly. Not so much because D/G is necessarily the ONLY way someone is allowed to ship as it's blazingly obvious that this site is devoted to that ship. Someone who bashes D/G on a D/G site is just looking to stir up controversy and trouble. Troll elsewhere, and find something more constructive to do with your time, while you're at it.

3) If it's a one-shot, there will NOT be a new chapter. Deal with it. The end is where the author says it is. While most authors do take into account the opinions of intelligent reviewers, often-times when an author PLANNED for a fic to be a one-shot, he or she really feels that the fic had concluded where it did, and don't even have plans for a continuation.

~*~

Christ, I sound like quite the sanctimonious tart. But I'm really not... merely jaded from my fandom experiences.

No one's perfect, but let me live under my happy delusion that everyone tries to be at least good ;)

On that note, hatred, death threats and flames for me should be directed to my email. Anyone who troubles the other Cabal ladies with those issues can expect a whipping by smite stick.

Happy writing, everyone!
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