Frequently Asked Community - Fandom & Community
What’s this “OOK” thing about in the comments?
It’s the cry of the wild MUnkey.
What’s a MUnkey?
That’s what dedicated MU readers started calling themselves. It’s a portmanteau of “MU” and “monkey”, as in “refresh monkey”, as in somebody who sits on a site when an update is expected and hits the refresh.
Why don’t you delete all the posts that say nothing but “first” or “ook”?
Short answer: can’t be bothered.
Long answer: If somebody chooses to express their appreciation for the story with a single word or two, I’m not going to be a bitch about it. I try to delete as few comments as I can, anyway. It helps foster open discussion and stops the numbering from getting all jumbled up when people are replying.
But I’m annoyed by comments which say nothing about the story and add nothing productive to the discussion. Should I post a ranty comment expressing this conviction?
Sure, but only if you’re wearing a Ring of Protection From Hypocrisy.
Do you read all the comments on the story?
Every one. Even the ones that are left on reeeeally old chapters. My admin panel gives me a list of comments in order of most recent, so I don’t have to go looking for them.
Do you respond to comments?
More often than I should. If you ask me a direct question, I will usually answer on the same page… unless it involves story details that haven’t been revealed yet. If I don’t respond, that usually means I had a bunch of stuff to get done at the time you left it and by the time I came back there were a hundred other comments. This has also been happening with my email of late.
If you need a response from me and haven’t received one, go ahead and give another poke.
Are there MU fan communities?
There’s the official forum on my website, which has moderated membership. I’m making an effort to check the queue at least once a week, sometimes even daily during the week, but I sometimes fall behind. There’s also a Facebook group, linked in the sidebar, and at least one forum has a thread dedicated to discussing Tales of MU.
That’s what I’m aware of now. Of course, nothing stops you from adding a MU discussion to your favorite forum, if appropriate, or starting your own community.
I heard that you delete criticism and comments from people who you disagree with. Is that true?
Boy, do I hear this one a lot. The funny thing is, if you look at any chapter, you’ll see (undeleted) criticism in it… and more than a few of them have people disagreeing with me and vice versa. I’ve actually stayed all night having heated debates in the comment section.
All this is not to say that I don’t delete comments, ever… but there’s a difference between criticism/disagreement and, say, a personal attack on myself or another reader.
If you’re worried about whether or not your comment’s going to be deleted, the second best thing to do is read the moderation policy. The best thing to do is simply not be a dick to other people.
If you want to discuss Tales of MU without worrying about my moderation… or want to feel free to critique aspects of my work without engaging in a dialogue with me (because… fair warning… I interpret a comment addressed to me to be an opening for discussion), perhaps the best thing to do would be to join or start a discussion in an independent venue.
(See also fan communities, above.)
Do you accept fan art?
I condone, accept, and wholeheartedly encourage fan art! I cannot draw (a combination of a defect in my muscular control and a rather abstract grasp of spatial relationships limits my ability to render any thing in a realistic fashion) and am simply in awe of anybody who can. It’s like a form of magic to me. Even the MU insignia was thoughtfully donated by a talented student and teacher of the graphic arts.
Many great artists have already shared their renditions of MU characters in various ways, including DeviantArt accounts and messages posted on comments. The unofficial artist laureate of MU, Meeks, has a lot of really great drawings at her website.
In order to create a single location where people can showcase their work, I have created an official MU art community Livejournal. You don’t need to join the community to post to it, but you do need a Livejournal account. Luckily, those are still free. It’s a possible way to give your artwork more exposure.
If you don’t have a Livejournal account and don’t care to make one, you can also email fan art to me - my email address is alexandra usual symbol alexandraerin other usual symbol com. By doing so, you give me permission to post it to the fan art community myself… but really, why make more work for me?
How about fan fic?
My feelings on the subject are complicated, to say the least… you’d think giving into the urge to write some myself would have simplified things, but it hasn’t.
When I was more obscure, I had more important reasons than personal taste to discourage MU fan fic. With my method of publication, it was very possible that other people writing “MU stories” could have led to confusion over what was the original. Now that I’ve been at this for a year, that doesn’t seem as likely but I still have some concerns.
In the end, though, I don’t have the power or the inclination to police the internet, so here’s the lowdown on the subject:
The characters, settings, concepts, and stories of Tales of MU are not in the public domain, nor have they been released under a Creative Commons license. All rights are reserved, except where explicitly noted. For that reason, I cannot give anybody specific permission to write fan fic, and I am not interested in reading your fan fic or “guest submission”. Period.
My personal wishes aside, there could be legal issues if I did.
If you write fan fiction, please observe the usual courtesies: try to keep it in a venue that’s clearly and obviously intended for fan fiction, and disclaim like hell that that characters and concepts are not original to you. Tens of thousands of people have read Tales of MU but it’s still a fairly obscure fandom. It’s still possible somebody who’s never heard of it and can’t find it in Wikipedia or other “usual suspects” sites will assume they’re just original characters.
Whatever you do, do not send me a copy of it, give me a link to it, or try to share it in comments on my site(s) or through my forum. Any comment left on my site which makes reference to a fan fic you are writing or have written will be deleted in moderation. Period. End of story. I can’t afford to mess around with this.
I’m sorry if that seems like I’m being less than tolerant of a large portion of fandom… but there aren’t as many layers of separation between me and the fan community as there are for most authors, and that makes things a little bit sticky. Other authors who are more tolerant of fan fiction don’t have to worry about fans going into bookstores and leaving copies of their stories between the pages of their books. If you try to send your fan fic to a big name mainstream author, for instance, somebody will most likely pull it out before they actually see it, giving them some insulation. I don’t have anything like that. I have direct conversations with my readers every day.
So, while I understand that fan fiction exists and people like to write and read it, please be understanding of my position as well.
