Ding, Dong, the Font is Dead...

[cybermathwitch]

Hallelujah, saints be praised, ye gods and little fishies woohoo! According to this article at CNet News, Microsoft is getting rid of Times New Roman as the font of choice in Office 2007. (A more indepth article is here at fadtastic.net, and an article with example text in the new font, Cambria (as well as others they're rolling out) is here at Poynter.org. Cambria's pretty. ::G::

Hate hate hate hate hate Times New Roman. I actually have a folder in My Documents on my harddrive called "Times Prison" where I store the damn thing (in case a program just blows up without it) so that it's not in my font folder and my programs are forced to default to their secondary font. I was very luck in college because my professors accepted (and generally preferred) Arial for papers (which, coincidentally, takes up the most room per letter, if you're ever writing a paper based on page count and not word count. Verify, of course, that your teacher/professor will accept it. Many will.)

It's not that it's a serif font, though I do prefer sans-serif in general. (Verdana is my favorite.) I have an abiding love for Courier New, which is a serif font, possibly because my first exposure to fanfiction was reading pages and pages of plain text.

(Because yes, I'm old, and I don't just remember when fanfiction.net was cool, I remember when the Gossamer Project was cool. Back then? There were no nifty publishing apps to make archives out of. You either linked plain .txt files and trusted the author to have followed the formatting codes regarding character-per-line length or you hand coded everything before you put the .html version up. To this day when I write I still lean towards just using *asterisks* to indicate italics. And I have to remember that I can write straight in Word format rather than having to write it in Notepad, check the spelling in Word, and then save the Notepad draft to keep "smart quotes" - evil things - from blowing up in the final output.) And we had to walk uphill both ways to get to the archive. Snerk.

I'm not 100% sure if they're removing it completely or if they're just bumping it as the default standard, but it makes me happy either way. ::G::

sabre_hawke you might be interested in Poynter.org as it is a site for journalists about writing journalism.

Comments

[kurayaminokoe.livejournal.com]

bwahaha.

In college, teachers didn't really care what font as long as it was readable and uhm... presentable? So times, verdana, arial and such fonts were accepted. I think I stuck most by verdana... arial looked too big?

And uhm, i think my first fics were written in notepad too... not that they were any good, but that's allright... english isn't my native language and I think I learned lots from writing and reading :) Actually, because I was on dial up at the time, I'd save fics in notepad or wordpad (for the really big ones) and read them offline...

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure we were only allowed times and arial, but yay arial. Possibly I just hadn't discovered the wonders of Verdana at the time.

And I can't remember if I saved fics or not (though I do know that I actually printed out "The Magician" (in arial narrow sz 8 in two or three columns) to read once. I think I just stayed up all night hogging the internet.

[jarrodhenry.livejournal.com]

Fanfiction.net was cool?

I always found it annoying and filled with too much slash and not enough serious fanfic. Now I find it annoying, filled with too much slash and not enough serious fanfic, and so massive that it's impossible to find the good serious fanfic.

I mean, I wrote a law and order fanfic, and it was really good.. and it got buried because someone did a Jack McCoy/Lenny Briscoe slash piece.

All the fanficcing I did "back in the day" ended up being on private servers where we'd do the coil binding and selling type publishing to fangroup members.

We'd meet and transfer stuff over FidoNet

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

When it first premiered, the idea of a website that allowed you to (essentially) self-publish (rather than going through an archivist), as well as offer what (at least promised to be) a far-ranging, and frankly huge fandom database of fanfiction (including obscure fandoms that previously hadn't seen much in the way of archives because there were too few people and not many had the skills or space *too* archive) was an incredibly cool idea.

The execution sucked, and with truly opening publishing you get all levels of skill, which I think was off-putting to many truly gifted writers (though there are some gems hidden, I'm sure). But it was a start. Blogging has really revolutionized the way that fanfiction is shared now, though. Even in the last 3 years I've noticed a huge shift, and I'm sure it'll change again. While there's certainly a place for the kind of fan publications you're talking about, I think that internet publishing reaches a broader fanbase, and is more accessible to many who otherwise wouldn't get to experience such things. Unfortunately, we don't have a culture as open to the symbiosis of consumption and creation of media as Japan's.

The initial comment itself actually references an icon I saw on redblaze's LJ which made me think "omg, I remember *Gossamer*. I really am (in internet fandom terms) old."

[traveller.livejournal.com]

i'm interested in your definition of serious fanfic. would you care to expand?

[jarrodhenry.livejournal.com]

Serious Fanfiction. By that I mean fanfiction that I am proud to post somewhere. I fancy myself as a writer, and I simply am ashamed at the fanfiction community. I have to post my work under a pseudonym because of freaks on fanfiction.net and other sites making so much crossover slash that it is unhealthy to my future as a writer.

What I consider serious fanfiction is a group of people that expand my knowledge, and expand my skill level, and be something that furthers my career. Old time fanfic DID that. Then,.. it became open. Anyone who couldn't draw or sing decided they could write. And they did. And it was HORRID. Add to it fanfiction.net and how horrible it is.. and it all just falls apart.

There's no real point to writing fanfic when almost all the serious writers outwardly think that fanfic=loser.

That's because of this community.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

thank you so much!

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

First of all, it seems that you are speaking of two entirely separate issues here - type of fiction and the relative writing ability of the writer. There is no direct equation that slash=bad writing. Beyond that, slash in and of itself is one of the cornerstones of not only modern fanfiction and its associated communities, but of the "old time" fanfiction and communities that you mention. "Old time" fanfiction of the modern age would hearken back to the Star Trek groups and writers in the 1970s. Who did self publish in the manner you speak of (as there wasn't an internet yet) and a huge segment of which happened to be slash. The very term "slash" was initially created when (primarily Star Trek) fic writers began to distinguish stories that depicted friendship between Kirk and Spock from stories that depicted a romantic and/or sexual relationship between them by use of either an "&" for the former or a "/" for the later. While the symbol-system is a convention used for both heterosexual and homosexual pairings, the term "slash", because of it's association with the Star Trek fandom became associated specifically with homosexual pairings.

Let me also assure you that there are a multitude of incredibly skilled writers writing slash.

As to the relative skill with which fanfic writers write, well, some aspects of that are in the eye of the beholder. Judging the merits of art - ANY art - is highly subjective. There will always be, in any fandom, in any time period, in any age, good writers and bad writers. That hasn't changed. There was great fanfic back in the 70s, and there was crap fanfic back in the 70s. There was well written fanfic on Gossamer, and there was crap fanfic on Gossamer. There are, for that matter, excellent professional writers and writers whose work I pick up and wonder how they ever got past an editor. But that's ok. Read the stuff you like, don't read the stuff you don't, and live and let live. The work of others shouldn't be any threat to your own abilities and accomplishments.

Writers aren't made whole cloth, it takes years of practice, years of refining that technique to become good at any kind of writing. Fanfiction is no different. If you were to start restricting the world of writing to only those who were already "good" at it, how would anyone else ever get that way? I know that my first attempts at writing fanfiction were awful. But they were steps. And the feedback from other readers and writers in fanfiction communities was integral to my improvement as a writer. If only "good" writing got published, how would anyone get feedback? How would they know what was good or bad about what they were doing?

Sites like fanfiction.net, and other major archives, as well as the growing internet fandom culture are making huge strides in how who we are and what we do is seen by the greater community. We're breaking down misconceptions and preconceptions about who writes fanfiction, about who likes what kinds of shows, and who goes to conventions everyday because the internet has given more people a voice in this sort of thing. Sociologists and anthropologists are starting to study the self-created cultures of fandom just like they would any other subculture. Universities are starting to offer classes on not only classical science fiction, but on modern television and popular culture. Professors and scholars are starting to take the phenomenon more seriously, and it's because people are standing up and saying "I do this, too." Popular authors like Peter David write fanfiction, and claim it.
(see next reply for continuation...)

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

Fanfiction has always been open. The entire *POINT* of fanfiction is that anyone and everyone who feels so moved can sit down and play with these characters, stories, and worlds. Believe me that those people you think can't write were writing before there was fanfiction.net. Fanfiction is an attempt of the masses to take back the central myths of our culture because throughout human history mythology and storytelling has been the property of no one and the inspiration of many.

In the end, the point of writing fanfiction is that you love the character(s), the universe, the story, the concept. It is that we as humans constantly reinvent and retell the stories that move us. It is for our own enjoyment as writers, and for the enjoyment of our readers. If you're ashamed to say that you write fanfic, then that's up to you, but don't blame it on the works of others. If you don't like the opinions that people on the outside hold about who does or doesn't write fanfiction, or whether or not it's valuable, then work to change them. Don't just bitch about the people you think are beneath you, because all you're doing by attacking other fanfic writers is, in the end, supporting the elitist ideas that caused those preconceptions in the first place.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

the next time i see you, kk, i'ma kiss you. fyi. nota bene.

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

::grins:: k.

[kurayaminokoe.livejournal.com]

*cough* scuse me... but might I add that people need to keep in mind that the internet isn't just visited by those who speak and write english as a native language, but also by people who aren't as skilled in english as native speakers are and are trying to learn the language. While some people might have the opinion that english is a very easy language to learn (including me), and have english language lessons offered to them, not everyone is that lucky. And even so, I know when I wrote (whether it is crap or not) it helped me learn to write in english better, because in some cases there were people kind enough to point out the errors or give tips on how to make a sentence flow better.

Yes I sometimes wander onto fanfiction.net (and other fanfiction archives) and run across really badly written stories, but sometimes I find very well written stories.

And I know the original commenter might not have meant the (lack of) english language skills as bad fanfiction, because I think i caught slash mentioned somewhere. I'm pretty sure there are some books out there for sale by professional writers that fall in the slash-category, but that'd be the non-serious books of course. Next to the humour and spoof section :)

And for everyone's information, no english isn't my native language at all, thank you very much :) It's Dutch, and I'll welcome all those who wish to write serious fiction to try it in Dutch.. see how hard it is to write in a language that isn't yours. I'm going to take a wild guess but you'll be right up there with what the original commenter labels not serious fanfiction (double cookies if you manage to make it slash).

As a last point (sorry cybermathwitch!!) I used to like communities but I've seen far too many of them end up filled with nothing but elitists saying they're better than other people and it made me sadly remember the old days... where fandoms and communities seemed to be made up of people willing to help other people instead of pointing out flaws.

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

No prob (assuming you were apologizing re: length?) - you bring another very valid point to the table. ::gives more cookies:: I know that if I tried to write something in Japanese, it would suck. A lot.

(And no wonder I haven't been able to find the gay/lesbian books - I was looking in fiction. Silly me.)

[kurayaminokoe.livejournal.com]

yeah, well that and for even commenting to begin with :) It does take a lot of I don't know, courage I would say to write something in a language not your own. But it can also be a great way to learn a language, by using it, and making it a challenge for yourself.

(And yeah, dummy, you have to go over to the non-serious fiction section of the bookstore)

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

::hits self up-side head:: Doh!

And I totally agree about using writing as a language learning tool. I've been seriously considering doing an online comic in Japanese for that very reason.

[i-am-girlfriday.livejournal.com]

HA! The Gossamer Project was my introduction to fanfic! I actually never read anything on fanfiction.net until I got into BSG! Oh Gossamer...how you entertained me :) Courier New is the preferred publishing world font. It's set as my default. Times New Roman is a colleg student's worst nightmare. It's so small! I'd fudge thing with Georgia. LOL!

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

Yep, mine too. Much love for Gossamer.

[dark-raven13.livejournal.com]

I like times new roman. ...weeps for poor old reliable times new roman...