#but not stuff created out of Obligation. that's not what fandom is For yknow? i want to consume & create it bc i Love Them

[glassautomaton]

incomprehensible lightlament tagger here so I feel obligated to defend my honor.

I think for me it comes down to 1) a lot of the (especially earlier) senior staff writing kind of sucking objective ass but then having these brief flashes of the most intriguing shit you’ve ever seen in there. mediocre stories with a great deal of potential are like crack to me (at least when it comes to actually making fanwork) bc they get my braingears turning as to how to expand on them (+ of course the handful of fucking brilliant senior stuff tales hidden in the clutter that will fuck you up forever that work precisely bc of the notoriety of the characters theyre about and that, I suspect, were created by people who felt very similarly to me) and 2) I just. rlly like the foundation as a setting and like pretty much every goi-associated character the senior staff all ultimately offer some unique perspective on foundation doctrine; clef is interesting bc of his shitty self-loathing deflection complex motivated by his past on in the goc & the fact he doesnt even work here of his own accord (see: the vanguard side of the no return canon for some pretty cool recent writing on this), light is interesting bc of her determination to hold on to a veneer of morality despite the general fuckedness of everything which, given the prominence of her being in some way entangled with the o5s, can turn her downright hubristic in some tales (see: the new faces splintercanon on the resurrection hub for this). which isnt to say original characters cant be that but having these established fairly iconic characters can be a useful shortcut and with the sheer context of everything that already exists on these guys you can usually end up somewhere very interesting a lot quicker than if you were to build your own characters from the ground up.

I will say though I immensely respect the notion of just straight up not caring about any of the big name characters, I kind of envy you if I’m honest. I think like stroytelling enjoyer motivations aside part of the senior staff’s appeal does also stem from people especially in fandom being more willing to engage with stories that have characters they’re already emotionally attached to in them which, y’know, isn’t a sin, people like what they like, but I do think people miss out on some real bangers hidden on the wiki because of it. I recognize I am part of the problem here, but, yknow, I dont control what the brain attaches itself to.

anyway, cheers! sorry again about the lightlament, i will say that isnt normal youve just accidentally stumbled into a mutuals circle of people who are categorically not normal about dr light. spiders georg etc

I think I get what you’re trying to say here, and again, it’s largely similar to why I wanted to write Resurrection-family articles in the first place. There is a bit of a difference though: I read Resurrection when I was a lot younger, when it first came out. Back then I hadn’t really been as discerning or critical of what I read on the wiki, so I either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the flaws in the story, and I liked it pretty uncritically. Even back then I wanted to write for it, and years later, when I decided to write for the Wiki, I still did. At that point, I noticed a lot more issues with Resurrection on re-read, but I was already attached to the canon. It was really influential to how I viewed the wiki, so in spite of its flaws it’s important to me as an SCP writer. These days, though, I’m probably far too critical to get attached to things in the same way, hence my general apathy towards staff stories (though it might be worth noting that even back then, I found senior staff stories annoying as I outlined in a previous post).

I also understand your second point about the staff representing interesting aspects of the setting. As a writer, though, in a lot of cases I just kind of figure “why bother with all that baggage when I can just write my own character that I’ll enjoy writing more and is better tailored to my needs?” And, again, these characters just seem too ill-defined to get a good bead on. That sort of falls back to the whole “why bother with wrangling all that when I can make my own character.” I wrote Iris because I find her whole deal as an established SCP to be interesting at a basic level, even if I find the original SCP-105 article itself to be bland and uninteresting. I am aware that by trying to write one solid interpretation of her I am only adding fuel to the fire of her having too many interpretations but one day I’ll have the majority of 105 tales under my name. Then who’ll be laughing.

And I definitely get just wanting to use characters that people already know. From a more cynical standpoint, it would help with interest in your content - as I’ve said before, my tales featuring more original characters haven’t done well - but just on an “I have an interest in this thing and I want people to talk to about it” level I get it. Lord knows how many times I’ve latched into a character from something only to see a grand total of two dudes and an ambitious octopus who also like them on the internet.

[allthepandasintheworld]

Yknow what this thought is going on main:

People who are pretentious cloud-yelling old men about art book/anthology-style zines are annoying as hell and none of you have ever actually spoken to a single person who participates in and runs them before coming to wildly incorrect conclusions about what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.

No, we are not “exploiting free labor”. It’s about as exploitative as participating in a big bang or prompt week. But with a well-run zine, you can expect a decent tip and free fandom stuff. It’s not about earning money to live. It never is. And if you desperately need the money to live, don’t join a zine. spend your time on things that actually guarantee money. You have fundamentally mistaken passion-driven, fan projects with profit-driven consumer products.

No, we are not “charging too much money”. Do you want us to pay our artists and production partners or not? Do you want us to donate proceeds to charity or not? If we do it for free, are we expected to pull money out of our endless pockets to make the project? Hell, actually, plenty of people DO make full free projects (I literally just ran one, Deadly Alliance is fully free and available for download on itch io). You fundamentally do not understand how money works, bc you cannot have a project that is both free and compensates people appropriately, bc the money has to come from *somewhere*.

No, we cannot print at home. Some of us don’t have printers, for one. Also, we cannot charge enough money to even *hope* to compensate artists fairly for their labor if we attempt to sell a zine printed in black and white on printer paper. And on top of that, even if we did have printers at home, the number of zines that need to be printed is prohibitively high for one individual to undertake (why don’t *you* try printing and binding 100 copies of a 40 page magazine all by yourself? Time is one thing, but you’d have to charge even higher amounts of money to be, you know, *fairly compensated*, since that seems to be a big concern). You are ignoring the fact that we are not trying to emulate your genre of traditional zine-making, and you do not understand the division of labor bc not everything can be done by yourself.

No, we cannot lower our costs. Artists and writers working for less than industry wage or volunteering their time for a charity project is one thing, but we can’t just refuse to pay printers and manufacturers. They did not volunteer to be chosen as our production partners, and they deserve to be compensated at their expected rates. You have fundamentally misunderstood how money works, bc we need to earn money in order to spend it.

If you want to print a zine at home and sell it for $3, please by all means do this. I fully support it and if you tag me in the project and I am interested, I will certainly boost it. You can make zines however you please, that’s the beauty of self publishing. You don’t need to feel beholden to the current (quite high) standards of production quality. But at the same time, you can’t yell at people who put in extra work to create a more polished project. And you certainly can’t accuse us of “exploiting” artists when the amount of work we ask for is functionally the same as any free fandom project. We don’t even ask for copyright use of their works—at *most*, a zine mod might ask for a short exclusivity period (only until the zine is wrapped, which is between 6 months to 1 year) after which you can literally do whatever you want with your piece. No respectable fandom zine will ever ask for copyright use of your piece, and only ask for privacy to maintain *value for the customers*. And any contributor who disagrees with a zine’s policies may withdraw their piece at any time with zero consequences bc no contracts are signed and they are not obligated to stick around if they don’t want to.

And if you are upset that you weren’t invited to a project or that you were rejected from one, just… make it yourself. Zines are self-published by nature. Print it at home. Sell it for $3. I don’t care. That’s the point of zines, you do it yourself bc no one else will.

finally as a footnote, I do agree that modern fandom anthologies should have a unique name to indicate it as a sub genre of zines but atp the term is so ingrained that I don’t think new terms will catch on anytime soon. I personally differentiate them as being traditional zines vs anthology-style zines (or art book zines, for projects with art-only) or just fandom anthologies, but they all still fall under the same broader category of zine aka self published magazine. Just bc someone hired a printer (which btw, a lot of zines go with small business printers, aren’t we all about supporting small businesses?) doesn’t mean their zine is “too professional to be a zine” or don’t belong under the umbrella term.