Rant O'Writing and Two Memes

[misscam]

You know the quality of fanfic is rather bad when you're happy to read a rather mediocre one and even encourages the writer somewhat. Sigh. Or maybe my standards are too high. Of course, I used to write crap too, with multiple exclamation marks and all. Shudder. At least I have improved - or so I like to think. It's funny how much writing can reflect who you are and how you grow. I read my old stuff and get a sense of how I was when younger (a whiny brat, yes). I read my own stuff now and look into my own mind. I can sometimes be a stranger to myself. Funny that.

But to get back to fanfics - the thing about mediocre fanfic is that you read it and hope for improvement (whereas badfic you read to see how bad it gets), almost willing the author to improve. At least I do. I feel like I'm cheerleading from the sides, so happy it's not awful, given how much crap I read. (But one's mediocre fic is another's horrid GAFF sometimes, of course.) And mediocre fics are easier to review for me than the brilliant ones - with mediocre I can pick on the areas that need improvement as well as what I liked, but with brilliant stories I feel like a praising idiot. (It's my Norwegian aversion to give compliments, I think. I mean, in Norway, "not bad" can be considered a fairly good compliment. We're such an odd people sometimes.)

But then, we all use reviews for different things, don't we? Sometimes, it seems some just use them to comment on the stories, some just use it to say "I'm here", some to get their own reviews and some seem to manage to use reviews to say nothing at all. I'm always grateful for reviews, yes, but sometimes I do want to hold up a blinking neon sign with "AND YOUR POINT WAS?" It's spam in review form. And Cam does not much care for spam.

Maybe that's why fanfic writers can be such a wanky bunch sometimes and fandom is such a minefield. We all bring such different ideas of what it should be, what reviews should be and what standards it should be held to with us that it is walking on slippery ice. Sooner or later you slip. I guess learning to laugh at yourself when you're on your ass is the way to keep sane in it all.

And now, for your laughing pleasure, Thug!Cam. Check our my patriotic hat (gift from lotus79 - pic was taken in Brisbane by her almost two years ago) and general air of wanting to stomp on Gits. I swear it should come with "I Thug for my Fandom".

One meme 'o writing and one o'icons.

1. Comment and I'll pick one or two of your lj interests and write you a drabble.
2. You have no say as to what I write for you or as to how much it will suck.

Nicked from gehayi
I love looking at people's icons, but I don't always *get* them - I often wonder stuff like, "Who's that guy?" or "Where's that quote from?" but I tend not to ask, for various reasons. So come on, here are my icons. Pick one (or more!) you're curious about, and I'll try to explain it. Or at least explain what I like about it.

Comments

[cathgrissom86.livejournal.com]

Ahaha. I love your thugness. Very thugified. Hmm. Write me a hot drabble, because you are very cool and also a thug.

[chem-nerd.livejournal.com]

Will you please bring your thugness stateside and lay the smackdown on my thermo exam? The calculus is throwing things at me. *ducks a sliderule* And I would love a drabble about my interests. :-)

[misscam.livejournal.com]

She wakes to the dawn and finds his body next to her, lightly snoring. Sleeping, he looks innocent and almost young, but neither of them are anymore. His hair has tones of grey and her body has scars of life. They are not the young scientist and exotic dancer anymore. But in the dark of night and under his silky touches she could pretend. For a little while. For old times' sake. For what never was between Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows, but always lingered in the air.

She will have to leave in the morning and leave it to never have been. But for now, she kisses his hair lightly and let him embrace her, living in the past and the dawn.

(Not my pairing, but I wanted to see if I could write it.)

[cathgrissom86.livejournal.com]

Awww, I love it! You're a really good writer! Thank you so much!

[misscam.livejournal.com]

:) Just don't tell the G/S shippers before they boil my treacherous ass... ;)

[cathgrissom86.livejournal.com]

Hahaha don't worry, I won't! Because I know how bad the ass-boiling hurts. Because I was supposed to be all C/G, but I totally love G/S too. And they almost castrated me when they found out.

[maureenlycaon.livejournal.com]

Of course, I used to write crap too, with multiple exclamation marks and all.

Thankfully, most of my early work was just interminable chronicles of the lives of wild animals, handwritten on notebook paper. If you'd suggested that maybe I should write about getting married to celebrities, or even rock stars, I'd have stared at you as if you'd grown a second head, and answered something like "I don't write about people!" Plus, there was no Net back then, so I couldn't share anything with anybody other than my stepparents and my immediate circle of friends. It took a long, long time for me to get a handle on anything like plot, or avoiding cliches.

Maybe that's why fanfic writers can be such a wanky bunch sometimes and fandom is such a minefield. We all bring such different ideas of what it should be, what reviews should be and what standards it should be held to with us that it is walking on slippery ice.

I think that's a MAJOR part of it. Many teenage (and sometimes older!) writers approach fanfic with the notion that it's like some vast support and self-esteem-building group, in which writing anything gets you lavish praise for "just trying" -- and they react with fury when other people don't play along with that. With others, it seems to be a form of socializing with other teenagers, by sharing their Mary-Sue and trading positive reviews in AOL message-speak. With still others, it seems to be a form of wish-fulfillment (again those MS's, and also the fics where something tragic doesn't happen or is resolved happily in the end), and it just doesn't seem to occur to them until they get the first bad review that other people who aren't close friends might actually see these private fantasies displayed in public, and not like them the way the author does.

With the writers in the PPC world, it's a form of revenge on writers on crappy fanfic.

And with a few, it's a form of tribute to the canon, or a desire to explore that canon's world, or even genuine art that's worth striving for excellence in. Obviously, I think I'm in these categories, and so are most of the writers whose work I admire. This probably explains why we don't respond nearly so badly to criticism.


You do look like Thug!Cam in that photo. :-)

1. Comment and I'll pick one or two of your lj interests and write you a drabble.

Gimme a drabble or two. Please? *puppy-dog eyes*

86 words

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Be your own thug, darnit!

Clear. No bubbles. Still waiting, feeling the steam like a tease brushing the skin. The cup is awaiting, waiting to do its duty as so many mornings before. The choice this morning is blueberry. And just as you begin to think someone has changed the rules of reality and the temperature for water boiling, the bubbles come. Still you wait. The bubbles grow, the steam engulfs you – and then you pour. And now it is morning, tea in your hand and the world at your fingertips.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

There ought to be a haven for all non-rabid shipper who don't cough furballs at all otehr pairings. I mean, I got my preferences, but geez, would you beat down someone in the mall because they bought another flavour tea than you?

[mercury-dragon.livejournal.com]

I am inclined to put the blame for badfic on kids not being taught from an early age to revere stories. Stories are your god and you shall worship them, mortal idiots!

*cough* drabble plzkthxbai

107 words

[misscam.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I had not Net in my early teenage years, taht's for sure. 18 and 19 was bad enough. Gah.

Yeah, you're probably right about the different responses to critisism depending on your approach to fanfic, but I do think some people can be in more than one category. Humans are rarely just one thing.

And now, a crappy attempt at darkfic...

He clings to his memories at first, remembering the light of the trees as each lash of the whip leaves him burning. His blood seems a liquid flame and he wonders why he is not ashes in the wind yet. He cannot feel his restraints anymore, but it does not matter. He is bound by pain, by loss, by will. Lashes becomes cuts becomes darkness in his mind and he clings to the memories of the memories. He was an Elf. He was. He must remember. But the darkness laughs in his mind and is pain and the pain is. He is... He is...

Becoming. Born.

Orc.

126 words

[misscam.livejournal.com]

:P

The beauty silences him, quiets his mind. For once, his blood does not scream. For once, the urge is gone. There is just him and the death, so very beautiful. Others scream at blood, but he treasures it. He cannot understand that others cannot see the grace in a clean cut, the loveliness in fear as life drips away, blood drop by blood drop. And the power, lifting him high above all. He hears the screams of conscience in his mind no longer, if he ever has. He kills. There is no greater power he can imagine, for it is all he has ever known.

But all too soon beauty fades and the urge sings like a wire in his blood.

There is never enough blood.

[adoraheatherly.livejournal.com]

Me?

93 words

[misscam.livejournal.com]

All must pass, the night whispers and darkness seeps in in shades of grey, becoming darker each time you look away. The stars reveal themselves, distant suns of the unknown. Their distance seem a strange comfort. Near and not near. Bright, even if all you see are the dead light of the past. All must pass. Fears, disappointments, sorrows – all come to night. All days end, all people sleep. All shadows fall under the moon the same. And you hide there, safer in your blanket of darkness, awake in the embrace of night.

[ekwy.livejournal.com]

*looks cute* Drabble me, pretty please?

136 words

[misscam.livejournal.com]

They bump into each other one day in a Diagon Alley shop, she with a head in her book and he with red hair unkempt from the wind. So much is the same. So much is changed. He is grimmer and eyes speak of fatigue. She knows he hunts remaining Death Eaters with Harry. She is less talkative and scars faded. He knows she remembers the night of Voldemort's attack still.

They sit in the sun and talk until they run out of words comfortable to speak. And they do it again the next week and the next and the next, until all uncomfortable words are said too and the shadows seem less.

Only then does he kiss her and she kisses him and the sun is bright, bright, bright in the blue and empty sky.

[mystefaction.livejournal.com]

Since no-one else has yet, I'll bite on meme #2:

Several of your icons seem to have the same cartoon woman in them (Evil Brunettes, Hope...). What's the story?

[misscam.livejournal.com]

:):)

That's Nemi, the main character in Norwegian comic strip about a snarky goth-bitch who drools over Elves on ocassion. I love her. (The hope one is from after the tsunami, where Norway also lost people.)

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

I was going to ask that question... eh... maybe not.

[reenjalas.livejournal.com]

I think that pic of you is more Gangsta!Cam than Thug!Cam. Yo!

If I wrote fanfiction, I think I would fit quite nicely in the 'medicore' fan fiction- category. (But that's just my ego talking. :P )

Oh joy, meme's!

1. Yay yay, drabble time again!

2. "Legolasoath" - What oath? If this is canon then I've must've missed it. Unless it's the "...and my bow"-thing from the Council of Elrond.

"Rimmeroiled" O.o ?

"OBthumb" - Where did this come from? :D

"Asatru4" and "Asatru1" - Asatru? What, pray tell, is that?

And we have that "not bad" thing here in Finland, too. :)

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Ask about your own icons, you crafty icon goddess? :P

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

Strange that with fanfiction. Most of my early stuff is... well, not very well written. Some of it has a good basic idea, but I lacked the instinct as to how make it better. I won't make any claims to my current works, but they're better than the early ones.

The ones that I started early in the fanfiction writing career, but didn't complete back then, will likely never be completed because I shudder when I read them. (Especially one called Princess of Slytherin, where Harry's long lost twin sister, who had been living with their Evans grandparents on the Côte D'Azur, came to Hogwarts... In my defense, it wasn't my idea originally... But I also have one with a prophecy... that's less than good.)

And, really, when it comes from someone Norwegian, not bad... that's a major compliment.

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

I need more Nemi icons...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Oh, shut up. :P Haven't got a gangster bone in my body.

"Legolasoath" is the keyword because the icon is from the scene where they talk about the Dead and the oath they broke to Isildur, making them damned.

"Rimmeroiled" - well, it's Rimmer. Being oiled up by two women.

"Obthumb" - just a pic of Orlando I found cute and added my own invented text to.

Asatru is the modern name for the faith of the Vikings. Odin, Thor and associated company. New Asatru is my new version of it.

I expect Finland does. You're just as peculiar as us, if not more so.

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

I'm partial to drabble memes. I love Thug!Cam. I can't wait to get a digital camera so I can start playing with pictures of meeee!