ladderax, posts by tag: 100 things - LiveJournal

I was going to write a rare personal post, but I seem to have lost the ability to talk about myself except to blurt out TMI pity party crap on Twitter like "so restless, ugh" or "I can't write!!!" (These are not direct quotes, but they may as well be.) Taking a Twitter hiatus has been good for me. I think. I'm really quite terrible at assessing my own emotions or knowing what is, in fact, good for me, and that's one reason I've gone back to therapy. The therapist I'm seeing takes a cognitive-behavioral approach and also makes me do a lot of work--there's a lot of recursive stuff, looking back on things I've just said and contextualizing/interpreting them, and sometimes I'm frustrated and think I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT PATTERNS THAT'S EVIDENCE OF but then when I really think about it I actually do.

Well, look at that, I've actually talked about myself.

And that actually fits in (sorta?) with what I wanted to talk about in this post, which is POV in writing and especially in fanfic. I'm currently writing a fic in first person (it's not for Inception, don't worry), and in order to do so I had to overcome a lot of internalized norms like "YOU NEVER WRITE A FIC IN FIRST PERSON! NEVER! NEVARRRRRRRRrr". I've had a number of conversations with people about this, and heard a lot of different interpretations for this rule, but I've never really heard an explanation that made me think "oh, OK, I understand; first person in fanfic really is a bad idea."

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I wasn’t sure I was going to tackle this one, but then I found schwa's post about epithets here.

A linguist and native German speaker, he reminds us that stylistic trends may vary in non-English speaking contexts, writing that “my teachers (German and foreign languages) always told us that actually using names all over is bad writing. I don't know what to believe anymore.”

I’m going to assume that most of us in fandom (at least in Inception fandom) are familiar with the epithet controversy. I’m not even sure it is a controversy and more of a widely accepted rule—No Epithets. Epithets are a well-accepted “automatic backspace”. And what’s more, people’s definition of an offensive epithet varies. It’s not just “the point man” or “the lithe soldier” or “the violet-eyed purple trouser snake”. To some, saying “the girl” or “the other man”--seemingly neutral, non-descriptive placeholders—are just as unacceptable.

I know that this is a loaded subject, so before we go any further, I’m just going to say that my intention is not to tell anyone what to do; it’s just to discuss my personal feelings and observations about this subject. Everyone has things they hate to see in fic, so I’m not here to judge anyone for liking or disliking epithets. ( moreCollapse )

I have a shameful confession to make: I'm a shame-deleter. If I'm really ashamed of something I've written, I will delete it. I'll always try to leave it up *somewhere*, if someone really wants to find it, but won't link to it anywhere. And I realize that's completely unfair to people who may actually like it. And it's not like it will erase it from my memory, or make it so that the people who may have read it and hated it didn't actually read it and hate it. So...I guess part of being an adult is learning to live with my mistakes. Basically I know I need to stop doing it. 

This is an aspect to the topic of "what do fanwriters/artists/creators owe their audience" that I hadn't yet considered. And I'm still not entirely sure. Do we owe it to our audience to keep our works available (partly so they don't have to go through the trouble of correcting broken bookmark links?) Obviously people often delete things for reasons other than being ashamed of them, and many times we don't know exactly why someone has removed something. Is it OK to take something down if we offer an explanation? Is It OK to take something down with the intention of editing it and re-posting it later? Lots of people I've talked to have the belief that if you've put something up on the internet that's its final form and they have to learn to live with it. But it can be tempting to tweak--there's always that EDIT and DELETE button. 

And if we're just like "oh my god this SUCKS I can't deal with it anymore", is it insulting to assume that our assessment of our work is superior to theirs? If I am ashamed of something I've written, I certainly don't think that the people who like it have terrible taste--I tend to separate the two in my mind in some illogical way. But I'm curious to know what you think about this, so I've made a poll. (If the poll doesn't address something you have to say, please say it in the comments & feel free to discuss any you've had with this subject.)

If you haven't read this essay by saucery about why some pairings become more popular than others, do it. It's incredibly thought-provoking and funny.

"Something about it speaks to you, beyond the mere socially acceptable forms of fannish liturgy; something about it is exactly what you need, the call of Self to Other, a binary opposition resolving itself. Something about it is basal and basic, a primordial chemistry, an ancient balancing-act in the process of... well, balancing itself."

It certainly explains why, for example, Sirius/Remus was infinitely more popular than Sirius/James--aside from James being dead at the time of the novels, Sirius and James were also maybe just too similar. (They also both had dark hair. I found a thing on Tumblr that said that dark hair/light hair couples* tended to be most popular, and I might be inclined to agree.) Everyone loves a good binary, or apparent binary, when it comes to relationships.

And I think that things like power dynamics (official or unofficial or some combination thereof) play a role in this too. It's why agekink and student/teacher pairings are so popular. First of all, we've got that Platonic cultural inheritance where student and teacher relationships (in the broadest sense) are often seen to be infused with an erotic power. Writes Kathleen Hull,

Plato’s own thinking—indeed, his whole project in philosophy—had its source in his love of his teacher, Socrates. Plato’s eros was real. Illuminated by the reality of his concrete experience, his love for Socrates was eventually transformed into a love of wisdom. Thus, Jaspers suggests, for Plato, thinking—good, hard, philosophical thinking becomes an upward-tending enthusiasm. In other words, both desire for wisdom and the intellectual means to it emerge through eros."
(Hull 26)

Which dovetails nicely with Saucery's point about the ideal shippy relationships being especially dialectical. We, or the characters we ship, are not only in love with the other person, but with everything around them, everything that makes them great or that they make great by their association with it. And, if something about them finds some harmonic point within us, we want them because of who they can help us to be. And, speaking of dialectical, such relationships can reveal the weakness in "strong" and experienced characters, can show that they still have things to learn and that they need love. THE TEACHER BECOMES THE STUDENT! </cliche>

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Tonight, for some reason, something made me think back to my disenchantment with Star Trek: Enterprise. I didn't hate the show--I watched most of the episodes, and there were things I enjoyed. (Most of them were probably Commander Shran, to be honest.) But I was trying to pinpoint what exactly it was about it that made it pale in comparison to the other series.

And a big part of it was the feeling that I never really knew any of the characters. Even on Voyager, about which my feelings are very mixed to say the least, there were characters that felt alive. Which I think was partly the acting and directing and partly the writing, as it usually is. Even when things were cliched and silly, they were memorable. Which makes it more fun. I remember Torres eating banana pancakes, the Doctor trying to create a holographic family (god that episode was sad), Tom Paris's ridiculous shirts, Harry Kim's clarinet. About the characters in Enterprise? I...erm...Malcolm Reed was allergic to pineapple? The ways they reacted in situations told us about them, but it was hard for me at least to relate to them on a really visceral level. Not that this is the only measure of how good a show is, but I've always found it difficult to connect with characters who don't have a plethora of silly little human details. Hobbies, memories, pet peeves, etc. I'm sure they did have some of them, but I just...keep completely drawing a blank.

I realize the absurdity of an Inception fan (and fanfic writer) saying this. As I've pointed out before, it's interesting that in a movie so concerned with creation and aesthetics, we know so little about what the characters actually like in those areas. We know Arthur and Saito both like Francis Bacon and a certain style of interior decor. And we know that Cobb and Mal like, um, skyscrapers. That's it. But it's like the characters are the ad executives or designers who achieve the perfect erasure of their own desires to fulfill someone else's. And from what I've read about those fields, that isn't even actually what happens--often there's room for the artist's own initiative. And presumably in designing the levels Ariadne as the architect had some room to personalize. But we don't know what her personal touches were, because we don't know her outside of those scenes. And we see some details around the characters, but we don't know what their relationship to them is. Does Yusuf actually like cats? Does Arthur actually like salad?

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I found this on Tumblr this morning and it made me mad. (I should probably get a bumper sticker saying that, since Tumblr is full of maddening things.)

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Those of you who follow me on Twitter have probably heard me babbling about this book, Warchild by Karin Lowachee. I loved many of the characters so much that it's pretty much taken over my life, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys angsty, subtext-filled m/m relationships, sci-fi, and/or coming-of age stories.

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{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

Well, I've decided to do the 100 Things Challenge. Since I spend most of my time when I'm not writing either thinking about, talking about, or reading writing, I figured that the topic of my 100 blog entries would be horse grooming products. HAHAHAH, just kidding. It's totally writing.

I'm planning to discuss a variety of writing genres, themes and subcultures. And I don't want it to be either a prescriptive "HOW TO WRITE" thing (I have opinions and will offer them, but I don't feel qualified to give blanket advice) or a tedious log of my own writing processes and hangups that no one wants to read. But I am actively soliciting topics! So if there's anything (broad or specific) that anyone wants to hear about, please let me know.

(Things I'm planning to do thus far:
-talking about a few poets/poems, novels, and fics I love & why
-essay on porn & style
-essay on the responsibilities/ideal relationships between fan creators & audiences
-reflections on some key experiences in my life as a writer
-discussions of tropes, rules, & advice
etc...)