Please pass the Brain Bleach...

You know, today was going to be a good day, until two things happened.

1) I saw a story I liked by someone in my fandom. So I followed this person to their personal journal, hoping that they would have back-posted some of their other stories so I could enjoy them. Instead, I found a bunch of random memes (which is fine, that's what personal journals are for). What's not fine is that this person uses one of these memes for the sole purpose of bashing people who came into the fandom after a certain date (2008, in case you're wondering), saying they 'can't stand their writing' and that, in fact, the only people they can stand are the ones they were already friends with.

Um, no. Way to not give me a chance. I consider myself to be an okay writer - certainly worse than some of the Big Name Fans in our fandom (of which this person is not one), but I try, and people seem to genuinely enjoy the things I write. And you know, really I write for me, and I just lap up the comments I get - that's the only reason why I publicly post, really. But to say that I'm automatically not any good at canon or style because I joined this fandom two years after you think I should have? Nuh-uh, logic fail. Besides, I'm one of the few people I know that actually a) was around/watched during the first season and b) came back later just to get into the fandom specifically.

The worst part was, after the review I left (which was generally positive), this person decided to take an attitude with pretty much everyone, including taking shots at people's ships and demanding that they take shots at writing pairings they're not comfortable with. Also, in the reply to my review, this person insinuated that their character interpretation is the only right one, ever. I didn't want to cause wank because this is an insanely tiny fandom and, without the gender-neutral pronouns, it would be painfully obvious who this person was. But... really?

You're going to judge me because you think I write the 'wrong' pairings, have no justification for my pairings, and I came into the fandom after an arbitrary date that you set? You know, we all pretty much get along; don't like, don't read, and all that. That being said, the canon itself is pretty much crack - it's one of the few series I know where you can literally get away with things that don't seem physically possible, including gruesome deaths and male pregnancy. So the fact that I took the entire length of a 9500-word fic, actually using canon scenes, to justify my characterization instead of making it cracky should mean something to them, even though they don't like my conclusion. And since this person's being a wanker, I'm not even going to go into how I think they're wrong about their characterization. Yes, they wrote a pairing I enjoy, and the story was good, but it soured completely once I realized that they had a high and mighty attitude.

2) This video. I don't know what possessed Justin to share this with me, but oh my god I have been crying for the last twenty minutes.

So, thanks. Thanks, life, for giving me two DO NOT WANTs in one day. NEDM is going to save this. I'm just going to go, you know, cry in a corner for the next forty-five minutes.

- Jen -

ETA: Apparently this entry needs its own lexicon, so here we go.
wank: specifically in the context of fandom, an argument that gets completely out of control. See additional and more specific use in the term 'grudgewank'.
wanker: generally a British term, original use meaning someone who wanks; just replace 'wank' with the previous definition.
canon: original production of a work. For instance, all seven Harry Potter books are canon. All released Harry Potter movies are also canon - a different canon. This is as opposed to fanon, which is never explicitly stated in the original work but picked up by fans of the work and presented as factually present in canon. Note spelling: canon is not a cannon, though I do wish I could shoot people with it sometimes. Compare use in religious senses: canonical books of the Bible.
fic: short for fanfiction - a piece of derivative fiction based off of an original work.
fandom: the legion of fans collected together for a certain canon. These fans generally have interaction with one another at some level - after all, these people both produce and read derivative work. Some fandoms are small, some are large, and the proportion may have nothing to do with the critical acclaim of the show. If you are just a fan, you are not necessarily a part of the fandom; fandom members actually participate in derivative works, whether that's through searching them out/reading them or producing them themselves.
meme: in this context, any sort of post that is picked up from a friend, posted on one's own personal Internet space, and then passed on to other friends. Somewhat like a virus in that respect. Compare Facebook notes where the instructions include 'tag 10 friends lol'.
ship: short for relationship. In fandom, used as a verb indicating that the poster prefers to see works with the given relationship in them. Example usage: "I ship Ron/Hermione lol so canon guys." Also used as a noun, as in someone sails on the Good Ship Harmonian. [If anyone gets the joke in this definition, I will bake you a dozen cookies of your choice, reedemable within the next year.]
pairing: what you ship. Traditionally posted with a / or x between the names, though portmanteaus are not unheard of. See also OTP, short for One True Pairing, which is the preferred ship for a fandom member, and OT3, short for, well, One True Three.
cracky: anything that is crack. Crack is generally a label for pairings that seem impossible in canon for characterization reasons (note that spatiotemporal difficulties never seem to factor into this). The 'crack' label is not equivalent to the 'OOC' (out of character) label. Given a legitimate enough argument, though, pairings can move out of the crack category, though most fandoms agree that certain pairings will always be crack. An example of a crack pairing would be Hogwarts Castle/Giant Squid. [Yes, this actually exists. Oh, the horror of the Internet.]
You happy now, AJ?