Over a decade ago when I first started getting into fanfiction, the term Alpha was used more frequently. A writer had the option of finding either an Alpha or a Beta to help them with their writing.
A Beta is for all the basics like grammar, but when it came to an Alpha, they did so much more. Alphas almost co-wrote the story with you, but not quite, and it was such a fun and interactive process.
What an Alpha Does:
Proofreading (like a beta)
Bouncing Ideas (email, chat, phone ideas back and forth)
Discussion (ideas, plots, problem points, or even just a pick-me-up)
Editor (small and large instances, often marked in red in your document)
Story Structure (does it flow? does it follow the format writer wanted?)
Canon vs Fanon Advice (distinguishing and suggesting)
Consistency (e.g. character has same color hat from beginning to end)
Major Rewrite Suggestions (an entire chapter doesn’t work? help!)
Cheerleading Through an Entire Fic (not just chapter by chapter)
Presentation (help in picking out everything from cover art to the tagline to the finished product structure, maybe even creating the PDF or HTML page for the writer)
And more that I’m not even thinking of right now
An Alpha would get credit for this (most of the time right underneath the author’s name on the cover art and in the story info), and people looked to alphas like they were special, they were very much appreciated, and if you found one, you would do pretty much anything for them.
I’ve been on both ends of this, and I really miss it being a more widespread thing. I’ve got my own alpha in the form of a friend who has been with me from the beginning of Alpha House, and she’s still a HUGE help. It wouldn’t be the fic it is without her, and I wish more writers could experience this.
How Using an Alpha Works
First you find one, and you get their email/chat ID/phone number. You tell them the ENTIRE idea for your fic (spoiling it all), where you want it to go, how you want it to feel, what the characters’ motivations are, etc. Then you send the alpha what you have so far, which can be part or all of the fic.
Once the alpha reads it, they mark in red any suggestions, but instead of just marking mistakes, the document looks like a professional editor from a book publishing company got a hold of it.
You’d either email back and forth or (more often) chat online or talk on the phone with them while you both went over it, each making different suggestions. It wasn’t just a one-day/one-sitting thing, and from then on there’s emails back and forth with cheerleading and ideas and chunks of fic from both the writer and the alpha, so that by the time the fic is done, anywhere from 1% to sometimes 49% of the writing is from the alpha (with your fic in mind, not their own way they wanted the story to go), and the rest of it was at least helped along by the alpha.
It was very rewarding to do this for other writers. I enjoyed it a lot. And having an alpha myself was such a treat. I can’t even explain it to you. It’s an awesome experience, and one I’d love every writer to experience.
What it Does for Beginners
New writers are vulnerable and don’t know their way around. An alpha would take them under their wing and help them along, helping them find where and how to post, how to use warnings, summaries, tags, etc. If a writer got bad feedback, the alpha was there to listen and encourage. If they got good feedback, an alpha was there to celebrate right along with them.
In my opinion, it made for more confident writers, because they were prepared for some of the shit writers get, and alphas stopped them from ever making newbie mistakes in the first place that get some writers flamed and ridiculed. Not that I’m condoning flaming, but the truth is it happens.
All in all, I’d love for the concept of Alphas to come back.
I wish this concept would come back as well – but since we can’t make that happen by wishing, we can at least publicize the concept of negotiating what level of beta work you need on a given story!!
Sometimes people are only comfortable giving/receiving SPAG (spelling and grammar) or limited input on how to keep the story in-universe or the characters from being too wildly OOC. Sometimes people deeply want to provide guidance on structure/flow/characterization/theme but are afraid the author will be offended, or they want the guidance but feel like that’s asking for too much of a commitment.
Laying out your needs/wants/expectations in advance is useful for both parties!! (pretty much like any other relationship)
[Image Description: Tag reading “I wrote this out of pure spite”]
The AO3 Tag of the Day is: Someone please take this opportunity to ask me about the Pumpkinification of the God Claudius
Ok, it is my great delight to introduce you all to one of the most absurd pieces of political satire ever written. It is a work of pure spite, entirely scurrilous and utterly delightful. It also has the distinction of having the best name ever: Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii, which is translated various ways, but which I’ve always thought is best rendered as The Pumpkinification of the God Claudius.
Now, Claudius was a Roman emperor in the first century and a pretty good one, all things considered. He was careful and thoughtful and did things like reform the judicial system and balance the budget and other boring, necessary stuff like that. He was also, and I say this factually and without prejudice, fat, ugly, physically disabled, and possessed of a severe speech impediment. For reasons unknown (but possibly related to the fact that he was all of those things and humanity basically sucks sometimes), people hated him. Hated. Which meant that when he died and his stepson took over, people were really excited. One of those people, Seneca, celebrated by writing the Apocolocyntosis.
A note about the fundamental joke of the Apocolocyntosis: when a Roman emperor died, it was customary for the Senate to meet and vote to make the dead emperor a god. After Claudius died, the Senate duly deified him, and, though we don’t have the exact decree, would likely have issued a proclamation along the lines of “The Deification of the God Claudius.” See where this is going? Yeah.
Here’s an incomplete list of shit that happens in the Apocolocyntosis:
Claudius orders Hercules to be executed
This doesn’t work out so well, because, you know, it’s Hercules
The line “The last words he was heard to speak in this world were….“Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself.” Whether he did or no, I cannot say, but certain it is he always did make a mess of everything.“
The gods apparently have a Senate too, where they meet to vote about whether Claudius should become a god. In this meeting, Claudius’s grandfather stands up and makes fun of him in front of the entire God Senate
(The God Senate runs on the Roman version of Robert’s Rules of Order)
Hercules physically threatens some god senators, because he’s, you know, Hercules
There’s a clown parade
Claudius ends up getting sent to the underworld, where literally everybody yells at him
No seriously. They hold an entire legal trial so that all the dead people can yell at him
Claudius ends up having to do the “tantalus reach out for the food or water and it runs away punishment thing” except with gambling for some reason
Another dead emperor shows up and announces that Claudius is one of his slaves and then just walks off with him
I feel like I should back up and mention again that there’s a clown parade
I’m serious. It’s a fucking clown parade. I have no fucking clue why
One thing the Pumpkinification does not involve? Pumpkins. There are no pumpkins in this pumpkinification book.
(Important side note: Claudius’s stepson who took over? Nero. Yeah, that Nero.)
“in this essay i will explore” memes piss me off because it implies y’all still using first person pronouns when writing academically. childish ass
In this essay, this writer will explore the implications of pretending that one’s own personal view is not part of one’s essay, and the inaccessibility of academia related to established custom of artificial detachment.
In this essay, I will demonstrate that the blanket ban on first-person pronouns in high-school and some university English classes is poorly understood and hastily adopted as a result. I will further illustrate that it is a mere substitute for explaining to inexperienced writers that excessive use of phrases like “I think” or “I believe” is unnecessary and rhetorically weakens academic writing, and that opinions expressed in an essay are already assumed to be those of the author. Finally, I will address strategies for effectively conveying that information to students, who often find it difficult to grasp.
In this essay, passive voice will be used throughout in order to distance the work done from any researchers, or, in reality, kind of imply all experiments were done by magical lab gremlins and the results were simply recorded.
in this essay, enlightenment will descend upon you without the agency of any living being. you will know things, yet know not how you know.
prepare yourself. it begins.
In this essay, I will use the first person pronoun as a bludgeoning weapon
an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks
the scarlet ibis
marigolds
the diamond necklace
the monkey’s paw
the open boat
the lady and the tiger
the minister’s black veil
an occurrence at owl creek bridge
a rose for emily
(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)
the cask of amontillado
the yellow wallpaper
the most dangerous game
a good man is hard to find
some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15
add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed
The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gift of the Magi, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County, Thank You Ma’am
the box social by james reaney. i remember we all had to silently read it in class, and you would hear the moment everyone reached the Part because some people would audibly go “what”
wHat did I just put my eyes on
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
Not quite a short story, but read in class: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone
Harrison Bergeron, Cat and the Coffee Drinkers
“Where are you going and where have you been” by Joyce carol oates
“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
the lottery by shirley jackson
i can’t believe Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady” wasn’t already mentioned
and also it’s not so much unsettling as more absurdist but “The Leader” by Eugene Ionesco definitely made me go wtf
Ett halvt ark papper. I cried so much.
Ночь у мазара, А. Шалимов
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, by Donald Barthelme
We read lots of good disturbing shit in hs or in the writing groups I joined in hs but somehow the top of the heap for shit that haunted me’s still indisputably Ethan Canin’s “The Palace Thief”. It’s not horror as such but it freaked me the fuck out.
There was another O. Henry short story we read that was also really alarming but I had to google a major spoiler (which is also a warning) to recall the name – “The Furnished Room”.
there will come soft rains by bradbury was very unsettling for middle school me
I had no idea so many were all written by Ray Bradbury, why did he do this to us
“Emergency” by Dennis Johnson – not entirely disturbing but really weird and there’s one Bad Part
“A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver – again not all that bad but sad and kind of creepy
Bradbury wrote a lot of weird shit. But, “The Book of Sand” and"The Library of Babel" by Luis Borges.
“It’s a Good Life” – Jerome Bixby
“The Little Black Bag” – Cyril M. Cornbluth
“The Cold Equations” – Tom Godwin
“The Nine Billion Names of God” – Arthur C. Clarke
“Mars is Heaven!” – Ray Bradbury
“Born of Man and Woman” – Richard Matheson
“That Only A Mother” – Judith Maril
“The Country of the Kind” – Damon Knight
“Mimsy Were The Borogroves” – Lewis Padgett
“Lamb to the Slaughter” – Roald Dahl
“We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” – Neil Gaiman
“BLIT” and “Different Kinds of Darkness” – David Langford (set in the same universe) (there are a couple of other “basilisk” stories and they’re worth checking out)
“The Secret Number” – Igor Teper
There will come soft rains and the other Bradbury one fucked me right up as a kid
i was really drunk and i saw this really huge, beefy football player sitting on a bench and crying. so i went into the bushes, gave him a flower, and we talked until he felt better. he gave me his number and said “call me if you ever want to vent too.”
i was at a straight bar and made friends with this gorgeous girl who i thought was straight. turns out she was a lesbian who was filthy rich and took me back to her place
bonus: she called me the next morning to take me out to brunch and take me on a $500 shopping spree as an “early birthday present”
sugar mama au?
i went on a date with a boy who had plans to take me to dinner and drinks. but he lost his wallet at a pizza place so we just walked around the neighborhood, sat in the park and talked. he was super embarrassed.
bonus: three hours later, a guy fb messages him saying he found his wallet! so we bonded for hours and still got to have a late dinner and drinks!
i was at another party and was kindly asked by a fratbro to hold his snapback while he tried to show proper wrestling form using a tree as his opponent. idk if he did it right, but when he was done he gave me the biggest shit eating grin and said “you’re cool man. keep the hat.”
during finals my friends and i got so stressed out we just put our speakers on full blast and started dancing on the furniture to “feliz navidad.” it was may.
my roommate and i came back to our dorm and found a huge waterbug on our sink. so we both locked ourselves in the closet and called public safety in a state of panic to come kill the bug.
bonus: they actually came. it took three men to kill it.
my friend decided to throw a beach-themed birthday party and, despite my protests, also decided to give live goldfish out as party favors. so in the midst of the party while everyone was getting drunk and dancing, my roommates and i stole all the fish and hoarded them in our rooms. and that’s how i became the mother to seventeen goldfish.
a boy that i met in my psych lecture asked me out on a date so i said sure. the date took place in his room and it consisted mostly of me sitting on his bed and listening while he talked about himself. at one point, he went into his closet to look for a souvenir he picked up from brussels, so i got up, stole his tequila bottle, and left.
So this weekend I found myself chatting with an established
comic writer, he asked me about my interest in the matter and I told him I ran
a webcomic but before he could even respond I qualified it with;
“Well it’s a fan comic, I’m not a real comic
creator.” He was appalled.
“What do you mean you’re not a real comic creator?” He demanded. “Do you have a
comic?”
“Well yeah but its a fan comic its not a real-” He
literally put his hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“You have a comic. You made a comic. You’re putting in
the work. You’re a real comic creator.” He told me about how one of the
people he works with on a comic started by writing Mass Effect fanfiction even.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since.
I’ve thought about how many times I’ve heard myself and
other say things like, “Oh, I’m a writer but I write fanfiction not like
real writing.” And thats so bullshit, he was right.
If you write you’re a
writer, end of story.
I’ve been thinking about this again lately, I’m not always happy with my work but I’ve put hundreds of hours into the comic and that’s not something a lot of people can claim.
ruby-dear archive 