Subject: It sort of is.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-07-04 23:29:00 UTC
At the least, if "completely recreating canon then just slapping your Sue in there" isn't an official charge (and I think you could argue plagiarism to fit it in) it's certainly something agents have stuck to a badfic anyway. I know I've called at least one Sue I've sporked out on it.
Basically, how rabid do we get with following the canon when charging?
I know that a certain amount of OOC doesn't even register because only the original creator can "get it right" even if they go through wild shifts in the canon work. Really, there is naturally a degree of error since we aren't the creators either.
"They're not gay," doesn't automatically make a slash sporkable, no matter the evidence, including word-of-god statements from the creators.
What I'm going for is "there wouldn't be a story without this divergence" moments that don't spawn full AU's. Basically they could either handwave it or tie the canon in knots to make it work. Even if the rest of the fic is bad, does it become chargeable?
If the characters behave like actual people, with deep and rational characterization in a well-described and well-thought-out scenario, I don't think it matters if they're somewhat OOC- generally, I see that charge used when a character is specifically warped to make them do something stupid, nonsensical, gratuitously evil/good (depending), or shallow, not necessarily just that they behave slightly differently from their canonical appearance. Serious OOCness is I think always chargeable not necessarily because it exists on its own, but because it is nearly impossible to make a character such without poor or inadequately-explained writing.
Similarly, if the rest of the fic is bad, I don;t think it matters how OOC the characters are. Heck, judging by "From Another World" and its clones, directly re-enacting canon with nothing new to add should be a charge in and of itself!
At the least, if "completely recreating canon then just slapping your Sue in there" isn't an official charge (and I think you could argue plagiarism to fit it in) it's certainly something agents have stuck to a badfic anyway. I know I've called at least one Sue I've sporked out on it.
I was told in the beginning that you have to more charges than just OOC to justify a mission. Although, if they are OOC enough, there is probably something else wrong with the story.
On the slash issue, most characters are assumed straight, because they are seen with people of the opposite sex, or because they are not see with people of the same sex, but very few out and out state that they are emphatically not interested in the same sex, so I see a lot of interpretive room.
For ones who have actually explicitly stated their sexual orientation, then a fic not addressing that would be chargeable, I believe.
Creator statements of things completely lacking in evidence in the canon, I'm a little softer on. Yes, that is what they intended, but if they felt so strongly about it, why did they not find 10 words or 10 seconds to state it? Especially in a series of books, they've got hundreds of thousands, if not millions of words of opportunity to get their intentions into canon.
As a writer you've got two problems with sending your work out. No matter what you meant, people only see what you actually wrote, and secondly, they bring their own set of experiences to their interpretation of what you actually wrote, so, yeah, I really count author statements as a lot less than what the canon said.
I will take it as an influence, but if that is the only source negating something in a fic, I would not charge for it.
Just a note of advice, if the primary charge is utter and complete stupidity of plot and characterization with other wise good spelling and grammar, it is really hard to write a mission on it. Not sure why, you'd think pure stupid (and OOC) would make for good sporking, but I've tried it twice and it's not easy.
"directly re-enacting canon with nothing new to add should be a charge in and of itself" By the Web you have no idea how many of those are on my personal badfic list. One was SPaG-aside decent since I hadn't played the game, and then became horrible once I watched a playthrough, and then became worse when I looked up a song.
I've discovered that I can't read more than one fan-insert of The Last Airbender at a time and keep them straight. Maybe I should write a non-PPC recursive fanfiction crossover where they all meet, or turn it over to the PPC because I can't manage it with the proper dignity.
As far as the "they aren't gay" statement... just run away screaming in this instance, it's confusing. Basically it's a stamp one of my sorters uses when she can't see anything else that violates canon. Dubious lube aside, most of the slash doesn't need killing.
That does raise a question about sticking with a sunken ship.
I'm still willing to wrestle with decent-grammar fics, even if I fail.