tdotbabs: (Peter:  Squicked)
I think I have this figured out now.

In 1990, someone wrote a Real Ghostbusters fan fiction called "Breathless Anticipation", in which Peter is hospitalized and hooked up to a breathing machine because he's cursed by a ghost that steals his breath. This triggered the feels of other ladies who, at the time, were in their 30s, and so THEY glomped onto this story and started writing their own tearjerker stories where Peter is hospitalized and injured and sick. They weren't fans of the source material (a few of them I've talked to refuse to touch the show itself), they were only fans of THAT FIC. The story could have been about the Sentinel, or Star Trek, or My Little Pony or the Muppet Babies, and the result would have been the same. Only these ladies insist on calling themselves a "fandom" of Real Ghostbusters.

Uh, no. Refusing the canon material, refusing to watch the show, eschewing how the characters were intended to be, acknowledging fan fiction only, and reimagining things from the ground up to tailor to your ideas isn't being a fan of something. I'm not exactly sure WHAT'S that called, but it sure as heck isn't fandom.

But that's just me. What do you guys think? What, to you, defines being a fan of something?

Date: 2014-08-10 12:52 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
A fan of something actually knows, at least relatively well, the source material (not a fan fiction, but the actual piece of media, as in book, comic, TV show, movie, etc.) it's from. Being part of fandom related to something implies you are a fan of said source material.

Hurt/comfort is indeed a genre and, when it's played for character development, can be interesting, but to latch onto a fandom and try to claim it as something you're part of, just because of a h/c fic you enjoyed reading is a little idiotic, I think.

Now I am starting to understand where the term "fake geek girl" comes from, it's probably people who call themselves part of a fandom, when they aren't even fans of the source material, just because they liked a piece of fan fiction. Ugh...

Date: 2014-08-10 02:19 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Dr. Venkman 88MPH-style)
Bahaha, Pete's face in your icon.

Some twisted crap can be good, but not without knowing how the characters should behave as a result to the twisted crap (the post I just made about Ray in IDW's comic series is pretty twisted, but at least, people are in character for it, and Burnham knows the source material REALLY well).

Huge beef of mine is all that smarmy stuff and the characters being so out-of-character that I'm spending the whole time reading the fic, thinking things like: Egon's not a mushy/merry man... Nope, Peter would NOT take that shit sitting down and he'd crank the sarcasm up to 11... Ray is bouncy and excitable, yes, but he's not a hyperactive 4-year-old having just downed a large can of Red Bull... and so on.

Date: 2014-08-10 02:55 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
Ray is awesome! And yay, he's getting the hot chick in the IDW comic, lol! Or it seemed like he and Jenny were getting closer. ;D

Egon's my favourite, but Ray comes in close second... ♥

Anything OOC bugs me the hell out, and I wind up stopping reading. LOL!

Date: 2014-08-10 03:25 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
Well, Omorka's gen stuff is pretty good (and she writes quite a bit of slice-of-life stuff), but she does love to write her smut. She has a lot of gen RGB fic and does write some movie-verse stuff, but you'd have to sift through the slashy ones and the smut. She's good about stating the rating and whether a fic has slash or slashy undertones or sexy scenes in it though, probably because she knows it's not for everybody.

On Livejournal, there was the user nesmith who started a multi-chapter movie-verse fan fic on the community called crossthestreams that was very promising to be very good, only to abandon it after four chapters, which made me very sad, lol.

I don't generally recommend his stuff because I sometimes find the characterizations often lapse into out-of-character territory at least slightly, and the guy sometimes gets on my nerves, because he tried to meddle with how Burnham was writing his comic, but Fritz Baugh's stuff on his site over at ectozone.com is pretty epic (in the sense that there is a lot of it, and it all has its own continuity), and you'd have stuff to read for ages. There is no smarm and no slash on that site. I won't touch the other Franchises fic with a ten foot pole (like Ghostbusters: West Coast Division) though because, while I don't necessarily mind self-inserts when well-written, if I am reading a Ghostbusters fan fiction, it's because I want to read about Stantz, Spengler, Venkman, Zeddemore and other actual characters in the actual source material, not a completely separate team that has nothing to do with stuff I've watched or read in the case of the comics.

Date: 2014-08-10 01:57 pm (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
I find she has something for everyone, for sure.

Her gen stuff is good. :)

Date: 2014-08-10 04:08 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
I hear Dan Aykroyd, for Ray... LOL! Well pretty much, I hear the movie actors for the four GBs, and other movie characters. Roger sounds like RGB/EGB Egon as played by Maurice Lamarche, lol.

Date: 2014-08-12 12:00 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] zeeth_kyrah
zeeth_kyrah: A glowing white and blue anthropomorphic horse stands before a pink and blue sky. (Default)
Hurt/comfort (or any other) genre fandom is why 50 Shades of Blech is a thing. Some people go out of their way to seek this stuff out, and then like fish in season, spawn their own teenager-sized angst and drama all over it. Other fandom need not apply, just the themes.

I tolerate it not because it don't care about the show/theme fandoms that get stomped on, but because people who are willing to go outside their usual experiences to explore something are exposed to a broader world. As an example, a lot of bronies are fans of the fandom, not the show -- but by being exposed to the show, they gain by osmosis some of the themes within it; and FiM is deliberately designed to expose people to lessons on making and keeping friends, and treating other people with compassion... which leads over the decades to fewer monsters in the real world, as long as the show never quite jumps the shark to become unaware self-parody.

Now, Ghostbusters (any variant) isn't as much about a particular social theme, so much as a framework on which stories can be built. But it's still a major fandom worth thinking about as a vehicle for story as such.

And humans think in stories.. so the stories you tell matter, even when you're just spilling your metaphorical guts on the page.
Edited (Oops, hit reply too soon.) Date: 2014-08-12 12:01 am (UTC)

Date: 2014-08-12 12:23 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
LOL! 50 Shades of Blech! That's awesome! (Considering it started out as a Twilight AU fan fiction... LOL!) And I won't even start on how unrealistic the BDSM in that trilogy is and how some of the things portrayed in the books are actually impossible, if not downright physically dangerous... from what I heard, since I'm most definitely NOT into that sort of thing. And I am not joking. If I want to feel pain, I go to the gym or attend full-contact martial arts classes; I don't want pain in the bedroom, nor do I find it sexy.

Ghostbusters, falling under sci-fi comedy with all its technobabble and the technology attached to it as well as the humour of it all, kind of needs that stuff on top of correct characterization to work in fan fic. Now, fic with darker themes can work as well, since we're talking about a theme of paranormal investigators. Most of the slice-of-life fan story will include mentions of equipment upkeep or monitoring and/or talk of the paranormal, even in passing. On top of that, if it's Real Ghostbusters-based, there will usually be at least a short appearance by Slimer. As long as fan fic writers realize that their work is not going to please everybody, they can write what they will, but at the same time, they shouldn't blow a fuse when people call them out on not giving a damn about the source material. ;)

I just remembered, back in my Lord of the Rings fandom days, that there was a whole faction of fic writers who were called "Frodo Healers" who basically solely wrote fan fiction in which Frodo was ill (anything from regular viruses to food poisoning, and I am not joking) or injured and had to be taken care of. Usually, it was set between his childhood and his 33rd birthday, but sometimes, post-War of the Ring, but pre-Grey Havens, since Frodo always remained touched by the Black Breath. There were scores of that stuff online, and holy shit was it ever bad!
Edited (Because I JUST remembered about Frodo Healers! OMG!) Date: 2014-08-12 12:33 am (UTC)

Date: 2014-08-12 02:49 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Dr. Stantz 88MPH-style)
Never heard of the show, but LOL at the character's heartbeat becoming a sentient being in fanon. *headdesk*

Oh my...

Okay, what, someone got upset because RGB!Peter is a cartoon character? Really? Wow, someone needs a reality check (not you, dear, THEM!). Even movie-verse Peter is a movie character, they aren't real (but I love stumbling upon Twitter and Tumbler RP accounts of the guys, oh, my it's so much fun!), and they do fictional character things, whether animated or not. In the words of one Dr. Ray Stantz: WOW!

Date: 2014-08-12 03:05 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] serendipity8791
serendipity8791: (Default)
@Spengler_GBI and @Venkman_GBI both followed me back, but I think they both follow anyone who follow them. They are awesome! @Stantz_GBI and @Zeddemore_GBI are not following me back, but I've talked with "Ray" once or twice.

I also follow @BillMurray which does state it's a parody account, but whoever is behind it is hilarious, and I love it!

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