The Ten Commandments
You may be looking for similar fanworks: Fandom's Ten Commandments or The Ten Commandments of Crossovers.
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Ten Commandments |
| Creator: | B. Cavis |
| Date(s): | early 2000s? |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | fandom rules |
| External Links: | FTen Commandments, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Ten Commandments is an essay by B. Cavis.
It is one of many at Octaves, a Buffy and Angel website.
The essay inspired a similar one, The Ten Commandments of Fan Fiction, by Kathryn Andersen.
Introduction
In the beginning, there was canon. And God saw that the canon was lame, and God said “This canon is lame.”The Lord took a handful of clay from all corners of the Earth and created a figure and imbued it with imagination and skill and knowledge of html code. And the Lord called this figure “Fanfiction author” and blew the breath of life into it that it might live and be able to squee.
And the Lord saw that the creation was good and the Lord said “This author is good.”
The Lord took the author up onto the mountain and spoke unto him, saying “You are a fic author, and you are My creation. These are My commandments. Follow them or flames shall reign down upon you and fill your email accounts.”
And the author was much afraid, and said unto the Lord “…okay…”
And these were the commandments the Lord lay down for the author, ten in number. And the number of the commandments was ten, and they numbered ten. There were ten commandments.
The Commandents
- Thou Shalt Write
- Thou Shalt Join Together
- Thou Shalt Be Wary of OC's
- Thou Shalt Kill Mary Sues
- Thou Shalt Write Crossovers
- Thou Shalt Not Become Fan Girls
- Thou Shalt Try New Pairings
- Thou Shalt Not Write Self-Insertion Fics
- Thou Shalt Write Smut
- Thou Shalt Send Feedback
Excerpt
Thou Shalt WriteThe Lord spoke unto the author and said “Lo, the canon is bad, for the writers have become corrupted and revel in wickedness. They stretch UST on for years, they hurt and horribly abuse the characters, and lo, this does not please Me. Mac should giveth up on Harm and buy a vibrator, and Mulder and Scully will never have onscreen sex. And lo, this does not please Me. You were created to fix it, and fix it you shall. Canon shall not limit you, and you shall not be limited by canon.”
And the fic author rejoiced, for he thought canon was sucky, and he was a Mac/Webb shipper.