A Guide to Fanfiction

I read alot of fanfiction. My roommate says I don't have a life & I tell her I do, I just choose to live a large portion of it online. I have friends that I'm separated from by thousands of miles and entire oceans because of the online part of my life. I write fanfiction too--I have a few one-shots & two multi-chapter stories. I'm no expert on fanfiction, but I figured it wouldn't be too condescending to do a little guide to fanfiction (click the image for a better picture if you can't read it or can't see the whole thing):

Many people start out on canonfic, but my first fanfic was Wide Awake. For awhile, I only read AH because I wanted to separate fanfiction from canon. After awhile, though, I wanted read about vampires again & my first AU fic was Just Let Me Die. It was also the first fanfiction I read with non-canon couples. It's taken my awhile to accept Vamp AU because I was a firm believer in keeping an author's mythology intact, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea. I just started Dusk and Her Embrace--it's new with only one chapter, but I can tell it's going to be good.
There are other worthy stories that I don't mention here, but I only had room on the chart for 3 per category. Check out The Lazy Yet Discerning Ficster for really good recs, especially if you're wary of ficdiving (scrounging through fanfiction sites for fics without them being rec'd first by a trusted source). Another good place to go is FanFicAholics Anon - Where Obsession Never Sleeps! on Facebook and the C2 that contains all the group members' fics. It's a very friendly group & all fanfiction fans are welcome. Most of the recs & member fics are TwiFic, but there's also fanfictions from other fandoms. Everyone is very welcoming and there's almost always someone lurking in the group to chat and help out with any fic-related questions you have. TLYDF also has done a fandom-hopping article or two where they talk about other fandoms they are a part of and rec some of their favorite fics from them.
I hope this guide helped someone sift through the sometimes-confusing world of fanfiction.

TTFN--ta ta for now! I'll be updating this blog more now that I know someone out there is readin it. :)

Wide Awake

I usually only review actual books, but this fanfiction SHOULD be a book, so it has earned a review. It's called Wide Awake by AngstGoddess003 (link to her LiveJournal page). The chapters to Wide Awake are on the sidebar on her main page--just click "1. Gingerbread Zombies" for the first chapter (the title of this post is also a link to the first chapter). It is an AMAZING story. It's for mature audiences only due to some lemons and limes (fanfiction terms meaning sexually explicit and near-sexual content) and dark themes. The lemons and limes are done in a tasteful manner, it's not SWP (smut--another fanfiction term meaning the same thing as lemons--without plot); even the smuttake (another fanfiction term for smut outtake) is done in a non-vulgar manner. It's a Twilight fanfiction. It's my opinon that AngstGoddes003 should change the names in this story (but keep Edward's first name the same--I like to call him Darkward) and get it published. As I said, this story is very dark. It's categorized OOC (out of character--the personalities aren't the same as they are in Twilight), but I think this is incorrect--I believe the characters in Twilight would act this way if they were in the same situation. It's a AU-All Human (an alternate universe and all the characters are human, even the ones that are vampires in Twilight) fanfiction. I suggest you read this when you have spare time because you will not want to quit once you've begun.

Twilight Director's Notebook

This isn't a review per se, it's more of a head's-up to any Twilighters who might be unsure of whether or not to buy this book or who don't know about it. The Twilight Director's Notebook is a must-buy for anyone who liked/loved the movie. It's done by Catherine Hardwicke; I am reluctant to say "written" because it isn't simply a written chronicle of how the movie was made--the "writing" is mostly captions on pictures and things such as that. It's very interesting. It has pictures, shows pages of the script, it's very in-depth; it's like a published scrapbook of the movie-making process. If you ever wanted to know what the process was that turned the sensational book Twilight into the blockbuster movie Twilight, then this is for you. I wasn't sure I wanted to buy this 176-page publication; I wasn't even really impressed with Hardwicke's direction of the movie, so why would I want to know anything about her process? But I'm very, very glad the fangirl in me won out because Twilight: Director's Notebook is fantastic.

Twilight

Not the movie, the book. I've scoured the 'Net for opinions on this book and found many and varied opinions, ranging from utter disgust to irrevocably in love.
Twilight is about a 17-year-old girl named Isabella "Bella" Swan who moves to rainy Forks, WA, to live with her father so that her mother can move around with her new husband. She meets alot of new people, but one sticks out in her mind: Edward Cullen. He's absolutely gorgeous, like no one else she's ever seen. He seems to to have a strange aversion to her. And then she finds out why: Edward Cullen is a vampire and her the scent of her blood is like a drug to him. Despite his insistence he is dangerous to her and she should stay away from him, they fall in love. *Cue the evil villians bent on tearing their love apart.* Well, really only 2 out of 3 of the villians want to tear their love apart. The cat-and-mouse game begins and our herione narrowly escapes with her life.
This book is great. There are few problems in it, one being the conflict is not present until near the end of the book. It's like, "Oops, there's no conflict. Let me write these bloodthirsty vampires into the mix." And since the book is written from the point of view of a seventeen-year-old girl and not a wise, old English professor, it's not brilliantly-written, filled with words that require a dictionary to pronounce and comprehend and plot points that boggle the mind. But it's incredibly descriptive and you can't help but fall in love with the characters. I would definitely read this book again if I was in posession of my copy.