The Toybox

justalurkr says, meta on BNFness! Which can never end well. Ever. The BNF cabal is always watching and they have powers. But on the other hand, I've really needed to stretch my pretentious muscles for a while. They're atrophing from misuse and laziness.

This is your guide to how to become a BNF (simplified, to make it easier for the commoner)

Now, BNFdom is not easy, contrary to popular belief. Yes, you get lots of feedback no matter how crappy your fic is, people buy you major electronic equipment, sure, if you speak, everyone instantly obeys your least breath. And yes, it's nice to be able to strike down your enemies with the psychic powers awarded to you once you have hit critical mass on friends-of. But. It's not easy.

Here's a few fallacies I've come across, that I'd like to correct before we start, some common questions people ask.

Jenn, don't I have to be an amazing writer/vidder/poster to attain BNFdom?

Oh, that's so cute! It's like you think quality has anything to do with it! You haven't been in fandom very long, have you? No. Your epic McKay/Sheppard or Clark/Lex or whatever can be a a total piece of crap! It's all marketing. We'll get to that later.

I'm a nasty person sometimes. Will this hold me back?

Jesus, no. Nice can work against you in a variety of ways. Culturing an *appearance* of nice is helpful, though, but not required. When you get to a certain point, nastiness is often called 'brutal honesty' and people will actually like you *more* the worse your behavior is! Strange but true.

But Jenn, I'm a nice person! What do I do?

You my friend are fucked. I suggest hanging out at TWOP and losing some of that idealistic gloss there. Practice calling people names in the mirror. Randomly stage attacks on the weakest fen in the herd under another pseudonym. This can double as practice for your later adventures in serious sockpuppeting.

Now, onto the primer.

The Idiots Guide to BNFdom by jenn (input and pictures from svmadelyn and amused commentary from amireal)

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Later editions will be So You're a BNF! What Now? and Maintaining Your BNF Status Through Multiple Fandoms. Stay tuned.

ETA: Edited to correct justalurkr's handle

Hmm.

So far this morning--in which I got up at the ungodly hour of eight-thirty, on a Saturday--I'm getting a seriously disproportionate number of lj errors when opening a page, refreshing, or posting. Anyone else having issues?