The Fanfiction Forum E-zine ~ December 2008

[mistysakura]

The Fanfiction Forum E-zine ~ December 2008



Wrapping it up
mistysakura

It's the last issue of the Fanfiction E-zine for the year, and we have a bumper issue for you! 2008 has been an eventful year indeed. It saw the introduction of the Fanfiction Hall of Fame, with its first two worthy inductees, mr_pikachu and Gavin Luper. Writing Sprints were also introduced, and saw great popularity thanks to their spontaneity and (at times) silliness. Following darktyranitar's resignation, a new mod is being chosen -- hopefully there will be some surprises in store. Fanfic traditions, such as the Trivia Game, e-zines and writing contests were also maintained in 2008; in particular, the 2008 Silver Pencils were a success, with Dragonfree claiming the coveted Awards Award. But there's plenty more to 2008! Thanks to member suggestions, the 2008 Golden Pencils have been overhauled, and nominations are underway. Hopefully, we will also be reviving Project SS (what is Project SS, I hear you ask?) and making preparations for a TPM poetry anthology. Thanks to all for a great year, and Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/non-denominational consumerism extravaganza.

This issue brings to you:

Conversations with the Stars ~ PancaKe
Lady Vulpix

~ Poetry Spotlight: Trap~
Gavin Luper

State of the Art ~ What are our writers up to?
Lady Vulpix

To Be a Master
mistysakura

Enjoy!

Conversations with the Stars ~ PancaKe
Lady Vulpix

Lady Vulpix: How long have you been writing?
PancaKe: Gosh. Since as long as I can remember.
Since I was a little kid, I was like "yeah I'm going to be an author!"
Lol, I used to make up book titles, and pretty much plagerize. I'd make up all these story titles for Goosebumps, but I'd call them like something else lame, like "Scary Shivers" or something hahaha.
Typical 6 year old stuff.

Lady Vulpix: Plagiarism is typical 6-year-old stuff? That's an interesting concept.
PancaKe: haha.well - it was pretty much plagerism. although you could call it fanfiction LOL.
I'm not sure how goosebumps fanfiction works though ^__^

Lady Vulpix: You can write fanfiction of just about anything. Take some aspect of it (the world, a set of characters, the physics, etc.) and build from there. I guess you could write fanfiction of one of the stories from Goosebumps.
Copying the plot, now, that's plagiarism.
PancaKe: haha I pretty much copied the plot just gave it a new title. I was such a clever 6 year old

Lady Vulpix: Hehe.
So how did you evolve from plagiarism to fanfiction?
PancaKe: I don't know. I guess I went from copying and slightly tweaking goosebumps titles when i was sixx, to coming up with my own ideas and writing stories in year 3 and 4.. so I would've been like 7 - 9ish... and then I got really into Pokemon when I turned 10, and it was a great thing to write about! Ahhh so many stories that I handed into school written about pokemon! :]

Lady Vulpix: Really? How did your teachers react to them?
PancaKe: Some were great ; they gave me like A+++ and stuff. Although now I know that's not a real mark, it was still fun to recieve.
There was a point where one teacher said we weren't allowed to use other ideas from things... that made me so mad. So I just used all the Tekken characters and hoped I wouldn't get caught. LOL.
But she asked me "ummm did you copy this from somewhere?" And I was like "well I got ideas for characters from a game..." which is TRUE... but I don't think she was crazy about it. haha.

Lady Vulpix: Heh. I bet that must have been annoying. But it's good to know how to create your own worlds too, isn't it?
PancaKe: Yeah. Although in some of my stories I still borrowed worlds from here and there! Haha. I think at the end of the day, regardless of whether you borrow the worlds or characters names etc, they eventually become your creations.

Lady Vulpix: Hmm... that could be interpreted in different ways. In a way, it makes sense. In another, it sounds like stealing.
I assume you meant the former, right? Or are we exploring the dark recesses of PancaKe's soul? ;-)
PancaKe: haha. Perhaps we are. ^_^
Maybe everything I've ever created is a form of stealing from thousands of other stories and combining them into one. Which, in a sense, is what I feel like I'm doing every time I write. But that's okay. Appropriation, not plagerism
Although I do feel rather evil now. Mwahahaha

Lady Vulpix: Hehehe.
Still, your stories must be more original than you give them credit for. Otherwise how do you explain the success of Lapras Valley High and its variants (and even spin-offs)?
PancaKe: Like, yeah. They are original to a certain extent. But everything is only original to a certain extent. Nothing is original anymore. There have been werewolf legends around for centuries. It's not like I invented those, or pokemon. And I guess I gathered inspiration from other stories such as Harry Potter, random anime's, etc.. Liked the sound of Sweet Valley High as well , so turned that
into Lapras Valley High. hahaha my secrets are out!
And all in all, the ideas of LVH came from the RPG that we had. It was such a fun RPG, I barely remember it or how it went. I just remember that I liked some of the ideas and things that happened in the RPG and I was like, yeah I'm going to write a story about this.
And it kinda took a life of its own from there. Yeah

Lady Vulpix: Speaking of Sweet Valley High... I've heard of a few people who took a while to read LVH because they were afraid there was a connection.
PancaKe: LOL are you serios? that is the funniest thing ever. Oh goodness. Were you one of them by any chance?

Lady Vulpix: Hehe. No, I wasn't. I first heard of LVH from a third party and heard such good comments that I felt I had to read it.
PancaKe: awww *blushes*
I reread it the other day. I laughed so hard at all my stupid speling errors. And all the things that I was into when I was a kid, I could see in that story (like skateboarding).

Lady Vulpix: Have your tastes changed much since then?
I recall you mentioning that a room filled with Christian skaters was like heaven to you.
PancaKe: Yeah. I got over skateboarding pretty quick - probaly when i realised i couldn't do it!
LOL. I'm still a Christian. But the whole skating thing was a pretty big phase.

Lady Vulpix: And you're not threatening people with eternal damnation anymore, right?
PancaKe: HAHAHA i wasn't very gentle back then.
Being gentle is something I'm defently working on.

Lady Vulpix: You have made another strange achievement. You've interrupted stories and started reposting them from chapter 1 at least twice while still maintaining your readers interested. How did you do that?
PancaKe: I have?! LOL!

Lady Vulpix: You don't remember? O_O
PancaKe: Are we still talking about LVH?

Lady Vulpix: Both LVH and Full Moon.
PancaKe: oh.
LOL full moon.
Yeah. I am STILL attempting to write that
It's my focus for NaNoWriMo.
But I get the feeling it's just not going to work.
I'd love it to. I really would. But Maybe I should just move on and get some new ideas . haha

Lady Vulpix: Really? I thought I'd never get to see how it ended!
PancaKe: haha I'll write it just for you

Lady Vulpix: Aww. ^_^
PancaKe: yeahh lol haha im still laughing about full moon. i wonder where my original copy of that went.
but anywya

Lady Vulpix: Back to the present (or at least more recent past), what inspired you to write Hunted?
PancaKe: Hmmm...
Hunted is a two part story - mainly inspired by force i guess.
It was an assignment for Writing Fiction.

Lady Vulpix: A course I wish I could take...
PancaKe: And I was sitting there in class, and the idea kind of just, came to me? I had been toying with a few ideas, but this one arrived and I was like "here we go!"
Oh its really good. It was my favourite subject!

Lady Vulpix: I can see why.
PancaKe: and yeah I dont know... I sort of wanted to experimetn with the idea of the bad guy ...
cos we had to write from two perspectives. so I didn't want it to be "mwaha i am the evil guy" vs "i
"i'm the innocent person"
i wanted each person to rightfuly be the good guy in their own eyes... does that make sense?

Lady Vulpix: It does, and I think you've done a great job in that respect.
PancaKe: And yeah. that and once i shared my ideas, all my uni friends were like "GO WATCH HEROES" and so i watched episode one and was ike "ahh interesting."
awww thanks gabbi!

Lady Vulpix: I say what I think. As for Heroes... it did remind me of that. That would explain the powers.
How did it feel to come back to TPM after such a long absence?
PancaKe: Fantastic!
Because I had been trying to come back for a while. But my account got banned cos it got hacked or something. I bitched about it on msn to Andy and he fixed it for me! And yeah. Gosh it feels different, yet the same. Like coming home after a long period of time.
It's hard to explain. It's like, a community. A sort of family (not to get too mushy) but you grow to just know and accept these people. And there are people on tpm that i've known or seen around for years and it's awesome to come back and either get to know them better, or just go back to the way things were.
Yeah. So long answer short - it's great.

Lady Vulpix: Would you say many things changed on TPM since you left?
PancaKe: Ummm...
Some things have, some things havent. Activity has decreased, but that has been dropping since 2005 , so that wasn't a major thing I noticed. Some people have changed, there are few new faces, ...
All in all, the majority is still the same though. It's really quite refreshing. I feel like we've all grown up together
aww here i go getting all mushy

Lady Vulpix: :-D
PancaKe: yeah
I like that I came back and everyone was like hey sup you!
I never had any enemies which was nice. Although, I don't have a fierce enough personality to have enemies on tpm. :]

Lady Vulpix: You never know... there are people who will just point at the first person they cross paths with and make him/her their enemy.
But yes, you've always had a good reputation on TPM.
How did it all begin anyway? Now it feels like you've always been an important part of the community.
PancaKe: Haha. Really? I never really felt like an important part of the community outside of fanfic.
I enjoyed reading and writing, and so i stayed there. I've never really had opinions as such, and so I didn't really have anything to say in misc or any topics to post etc. So I kind of just always played nice and I'm not really sure why people think that i'm an important part. I'm not complaining though! haha It's nice to hear that , it really is but like, I never really did anything to earn it

[Bulbasaur4]

ROFLMAO, I must say that your comic is brilliant! I loved every single panel, especially "I refuse to be your propaganda tool!" XD

And WOW, kudos to Gabi for her EXCELLENT article! Interviewing so many people and then taking snippets from the mini interviews had to be a lot of work! It was really fun to hear what everyone was up to and it flowed nicely!

And I must say that Gavin is a great interviewer. Very easy-going, calm and fun!

[Houndoom_Lover]

^,^ Missed another E-zine. Ah, well, such is life. How personal this one was! What a great one! ^___^ I love the comic, I'm going to have to backtrack and read all the ones I've missed ^_^

I love the E-zine ^,^

[classy_cat18]

I feel so lazy...

Actually, there seems to be some missing hours, so now graduation will be somewhere in the spring. *sniffles*

Crap. What's happened to me?

[Lady Vulpix]

I liked the "right more" part. For such a writer, such a reader.

And Kalah's poem too. I also liked what she did with the text alignment.

Wow, was this issue really so big it didn't fit in one post?

[mistysakura]

TPM is a meanie and won't let you have more than ten images in a post, including smileys. Sigh. I really enjoyed the poetry spotlight! It was especially cool to read about the intended effect of the layout. And Gabi's "State of the Art" article must have taken ages. Glad to know that WotF's not dead And I loved the spoiler. Tara is brilliantly funny as usual. Hehe, was in a bit of a rush cobbling this issue together; I even forgot to sticky it.

[PancaKe]

DANG! I fail at this too.

Ada, I'll just pm you my article when I get the chance and then you can include it in January's one, yeah? Ok awesome.

I feel like writing after reading this

[Gavin Luper]

This was an awesome edition. I have to say, it was really fun interviewing Kalah too - she's a very good interviewee and easy to talk to, not to mention knowledgeable about writery stuff. Ada's comic was classic, especially the first reader's refusal to be a propaganda tool. Gabi's interview was illuminating as always, and it was great to see Tara's return celebrated in print hehe. Lastly, Gabi's other article was absolutely epic and a brilliant idea for the final edition of the year - hats off to you, Gabi.

Cheers!

[PancaKe]

Yeah Gabz. Your article was absolute pwnage. So much effort! I really commend you on that It was so interesting to read, and it made me feel a bit beter about not being the only writer to be too busy to write haha.

And Ada, oh your comic has me in stitches. It's hilarious

[Chris 2.1]

Cool issue! I especially liked the poem, and the use of space and text alignment. It gave everything loads more impact. Seeing Gav interviewing was also great, and of course, the mammoth article by Lady V. It's very cool to see what people are up to when they're not posting on TPM!