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Tuesday, December 17th, 2002 07:37 am
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Is anyone vaguely aware spam goes through trends?
Okay, like the big thing through the last couple of months was the two inches to penis size thing. You know, all well and good, possibly interesting if I'd had a penis of my own that needed inches, but there you go. Not the smartest spammers in the herd.
Now, however, it's eat pizza and lose weight and Remote Controlled Mini Matchbox Cars. And Scooters. I suppose in honor of the Christmas season. And they're far more energetic than the Penii People--I get five a day.
What should scare me is that this is just the spam that makes it through all my filters.
I find it funny that real email sometimes doesn't make it, but spam does.
Right, completely pointless entry. Moving on.
Recs:
Snowlight That Falls by Andariel. Bethy's birthday fic--see? Told you Beth is like mainlining inspiration--and I am a total whore for that title. Just read it out loud to yourself once. Anyway. Clichefic exactly the way it's supposed to be--sweet, GOOD, interesting, gentle as snowflakes, and stunningly lovely. *hugs Andy* It's pure enjoyment, with coffee and cuddling and 'lget out of those wet clothes'<--love that.
I'm so very jumpy right now.
Stapling Clark by jacynrebekah. There are times when people just--write things. That just shouldn't make sense. Or work. Except, you know, they do. *shakes head* I am totally amused as HELL and this is just--*giggles*. Read it.
Now, if you aren't already in love with this lady, you will be now.
The Bodyswitch Snippet by RivkaT. See, it doesn't have a title yet, so I must make one up! I almost laughed myself into a hernia reading it, and it's--like the story I never knew I wanted to read until it appeared before me.
Go stalk for it. No, really. Hyperactive Lex in Clark's body?
Ah, there you go. Run along now.
Rivka also offered up part I and part II of another story to constructive critique. I'm still thinking of what to say besides, aww.
*grins* Author note on the story.
Notes: I read that yellow Kryptonite was “fictional,” unlike all the other kinds of Kryptonite, and somehow that turned into this.
*snickering*
Okay. I'm a giggling mess.
Other Stuff
I went to bed early last night, incredibly stupid thing to do, but my head hurt and I was getting jittery. Which is jenn-speak for, I have nothing I can actively work on and it's making me gripey.
I suppose most people actually LIKE it when they finish a story. I do too, really. It's just--it leaves me with nothing to do briefly, since there's the highs of the pre-posting panic, the post-posting panic, the post-posting euphoria, the post-posting let-down, the obsessive checking for feedback, the feedback-euphoria, leveling out to eventually, something resembling peace, where I can work on something again.
I'm not a huge fan of peace myself. Let there be emotional eddies, I say. And lots of them. Lots and lots. This can't be healthy.
In more fannish related thought, I was talking to Koi one night (Mercy writer, yippee! sorry, must advertise for that story at any time opportunity is given), and I was making noises about trends in fanfic. Some are purely artificial, like, say, the wonderful challenges (Isilya's lovely Snugglefic Challenge comes to mind). Others are episode related, or specific event related--for those around post-Jitters, I think everyone remembers the flood of Woobie!Lex H/C's that soaked the landscape of SV fanfic. Wow, that's a bad metaphor. And I think we're all still pretty damn reactive to the episode "Red", which has, possibly, surpassed Jitters and Hourglass in the number of stories based on it. It's still surprising me that Heat didn't generate that kind of energy, though that could be because it was the second episode of the season and most people were still in 'thank God we have episodes again' mode.
Anyway, I was thinking more specifically at the time, in terms of fics that tended to cause a change in how most fanfic writers wrote their characters and/or stories. Or view the characters, for that matter.
Er, cut text. This is getting a little long for an entry and sort of rambling.
A good example would be the Alien!Clark or PonFarr!Clark stories, of which there are so very, very many. Which is fine--not my cup of tea, but it was and IS a growing subgenre in the entire Clark/Lex fanfic pool o' fic. The first of the serious efforts towards Alien!Clark was, I think, Storm Warning by C Roxane, and I think that's probably one of the biggest influences on those fics to this day.
But you know, there are other catalytical stories. I've mentioned before, numerous, numerous, a scary number of times, perhaps, that Te's Past Grief. left massive footprints all over fanfic, most especially in relation to the characterization of Clark. Not only in how fanfic writers viewed him, but how they related to him as a character and how they wrote him.
I suppose this is what makes me like fandom so much, actually. It may sound weird, but it's where the term community becomes more active than symbolic.
Around September, Pearl-o and I started listing out the hundred fanfics we thought were most influential on the SV slash fandom as a whole--though I'd go so far as to say that some slash fics have been influential on the fandom as a whole as well, not just the slash portion. It's a still-shifting list--I tend to emphasize older stories, since I can see echoes in current stories occasionally from those, and Pearl-o is better at picking out later stories she felt seriously influenced current fandom trends.
When I say 'trends', I'm not saying 'copying the concept of a story' or even borrowing fanon. Again, it comes out more often in how authors choose to characterize and among CLexers, how they choose to view the relationship as a whole, and then the trend to be reactive to that trend and write the opposite, and really, I have far too much fun in this. I'd probably be much better at observing it if I wasn't so damn reactive myself. Possibly the only thing that could ever lure me from active writing would be just being able to sit back and watch this.
It's nice my attention span is so short that I know I'd get bored doing that in under two weeks. I like to write.
But anyway.
I did manage to seriously annoy someone one night making a very random observation on fanon in fanfic. Which I found kind of frustrating. Originality in plot is all well and good, but excellence in writing beats originality with a two by four most of the time. I think originality is highly overrated, I suppose. I mean, it's nice when someone writes something totally new, but it's not a benchmark for quality. I'm still shuddering over some experimental fic I picked up once in an anthology. Which may just show my plebian taste or my preference for stories that, you know, ARE stories. Since the point, at least for me, is to entertain AND say something interesting, with the emphasis being on entertain. I don't see the point of just doing the latter alone.
And that sound was someone lining me up for a shot. Hold on, I'm not finished.
There was, is, and will always be a criticism of the use of fanon in fanfic, just like authors of non-fanfic criticize fanfic for being derivative of a show/movie/book/comics instead of original creations. In other words, I've spent too much time on the Ellis forums wondering if half the people criticizing fanfic had ever actually read any. It makes me wonder what they started out writing, or if they write at all. Even my original work bears the stamp of influences from television, books, etc--I really can't escape it, popular culture is part of who I am, and to be honest, I don't want to escape it.
Right, wandering off topic. As I said, rambling.
Anyway, being incurably curious about my own tradition and influences, I flicked around to check out who I've been borrowing from all this last year of fanfic writing. It turns out the biggest three are about what I expected--Te's Past Grief and Koi's Mercy (especially for The Wasteland, though I'm not sure how obvious that is). But those are the ones I remember specifically because they were great, massive pianos that dropped on my head, not the ones that sink into the subconscious and come out in unexpected ways.
Lanning's Identical series, for example--I KNOW I've internalized that one big time, especially her Lex, though I can't point out where and how, since I just don't have that kind of objectivity in my own work. Destina's Chrysalis, definitely, for the Lex there, and of course, my personal Must Read List, which is somewhere in my diary but I just can't face looking for it right now, God there are a lot of entries. Jane St. Clair's Ozone is another one, and again, that's the ones I can REMEMBER giving me ideas.
I meta alot, don't I?
Ones that really surprised me, however, because I didn't catch them as being so specific, are ones I seriously seem to internalize--Sarah T and Livia seem to have actually left some skid marks across my ability to form a story and story idea. I've always admired their work, though I didn't always relate to the characterizations as well as I probably should have, but especially with Sarah T's Immanence, I picked up a lot more generalized understanding of and sympathy for Clark.
Livia just hits me with baseball bats whenever I start showing re-emerging Clark Issues.
But that's not the end of it. *sighs*
Honestly, I have the sneaking suspicion that if I've read a story and liked it, I internalize pieces of it, whether I know I'm doing it or not. And I think that comes out when I write. It's not exactly a secret that in SV, I'm very reactive to what I read, moreso than I was in X-Men, which had a smaller pool of writers and an even smaller pool of writers I could stand to read without wishing for blunt sporks to ease the pain. Or in Voyager, actually, since there I neither social nor did I read as extensively and thoroughly, which I think was one of the main reasons I burned out on the fandom well before I'd actually run out of ideas.
*grins* Community. Not necessarily in social terms, though God knows, I'm losing my proud anti-social stance by leaps and bounds, but in artistic terms. A single, very powerful, and condensed group of writers who both influence through their fic and their thoughts ON fic and the show.
I'm just easy to amuse today. Feel free to discard as a testament to me avoiding going anywhere near Common Spaces.
Speaking of Standing in the Common Spaces, I think the beta I had for that fic is in a serious time crunch and doesn't have time to beta and I hate to push someone who jsut doesn't have time. Anyone out there have time and sufficent interest in beta'ing a crossover fic? It's--*swallows*--Smallville/Spiderman (there HAVE been weirder crossovers!), futurefic, and about sixty pages/twenty-three thousand words, though you will be asked to muse on the ending with me, since I'm having my usual Ending Issues, as well as over pacing, structure, and well, the usual. Though I did spellcheck this time first. Really.
And for those following My Longing for the Foley's Teddy Bear That Wears Cute Glasses....
Teddy Bear Icons I've been working on. I have one more set to go. Damn page only had sixty bear pictures! I shall go looking for more. Many, many more. Until I burn that bear obsession RIGHT outta here.
Okay, like the big thing through the last couple of months was the two inches to penis size thing. You know, all well and good, possibly interesting if I'd had a penis of my own that needed inches, but there you go. Not the smartest spammers in the herd.
Now, however, it's eat pizza and lose weight and Remote Controlled Mini Matchbox Cars. And Scooters. I suppose in honor of the Christmas season. And they're far more energetic than the Penii People--I get five a day.
What should scare me is that this is just the spam that makes it through all my filters.
I find it funny that real email sometimes doesn't make it, but spam does.
Right, completely pointless entry. Moving on.
Recs:
Snowlight That Falls by Andariel. Bethy's birthday fic--see? Told you Beth is like mainlining inspiration--and I am a total whore for that title. Just read it out loud to yourself once. Anyway. Clichefic exactly the way it's supposed to be--sweet, GOOD, interesting, gentle as snowflakes, and stunningly lovely. *hugs Andy* It's pure enjoyment, with coffee and cuddling and 'lget out of those wet clothes'<--love that.
I'm so very jumpy right now.
Stapling Clark by jacynrebekah. There are times when people just--write things. That just shouldn't make sense. Or work. Except, you know, they do. *shakes head* I am totally amused as HELL and this is just--*giggles*. Read it.
Now, if you aren't already in love with this lady, you will be now.
The Bodyswitch Snippet by RivkaT. See, it doesn't have a title yet, so I must make one up! I almost laughed myself into a hernia reading it, and it's--like the story I never knew I wanted to read until it appeared before me.
Go stalk for it. No, really. Hyperactive Lex in Clark's body?
Ah, there you go. Run along now.
Rivka also offered up part I and part II of another story to constructive critique. I'm still thinking of what to say besides, aww.
*grins* Author note on the story.
Notes: I read that yellow Kryptonite was “fictional,” unlike all the other kinds of Kryptonite, and somehow that turned into this.
*snickering*
Okay. I'm a giggling mess.
Other Stuff
I went to bed early last night, incredibly stupid thing to do, but my head hurt and I was getting jittery. Which is jenn-speak for, I have nothing I can actively work on and it's making me gripey.
I suppose most people actually LIKE it when they finish a story. I do too, really. It's just--it leaves me with nothing to do briefly, since there's the highs of the pre-posting panic, the post-posting panic, the post-posting euphoria, the post-posting let-down, the obsessive checking for feedback, the feedback-euphoria, leveling out to eventually, something resembling peace, where I can work on something again.
I'm not a huge fan of peace myself. Let there be emotional eddies, I say. And lots of them. Lots and lots. This can't be healthy.
In more fannish related thought, I was talking to Koi one night (Mercy writer, yippee! sorry, must advertise for that story at any time opportunity is given), and I was making noises about trends in fanfic. Some are purely artificial, like, say, the wonderful challenges (Isilya's lovely Snugglefic Challenge comes to mind). Others are episode related, or specific event related--for those around post-Jitters, I think everyone remembers the flood of Woobie!Lex H/C's that soaked the landscape of SV fanfic. Wow, that's a bad metaphor. And I think we're all still pretty damn reactive to the episode "Red", which has, possibly, surpassed Jitters and Hourglass in the number of stories based on it. It's still surprising me that Heat didn't generate that kind of energy, though that could be because it was the second episode of the season and most people were still in 'thank God we have episodes again' mode.
Anyway, I was thinking more specifically at the time, in terms of fics that tended to cause a change in how most fanfic writers wrote their characters and/or stories. Or view the characters, for that matter.
Er, cut text. This is getting a little long for an entry and sort of rambling.
A good example would be the Alien!Clark or PonFarr!Clark stories, of which there are so very, very many. Which is fine--not my cup of tea, but it was and IS a growing subgenre in the entire Clark/Lex fanfic pool o' fic. The first of the serious efforts towards Alien!Clark was, I think, Storm Warning by C Roxane, and I think that's probably one of the biggest influences on those fics to this day.
But you know, there are other catalytical stories. I've mentioned before, numerous, numerous, a scary number of times, perhaps, that Te's Past Grief. left massive footprints all over fanfic, most especially in relation to the characterization of Clark. Not only in how fanfic writers viewed him, but how they related to him as a character and how they wrote him.
I suppose this is what makes me like fandom so much, actually. It may sound weird, but it's where the term community becomes more active than symbolic.
Around September, Pearl-o and I started listing out the hundred fanfics we thought were most influential on the SV slash fandom as a whole--though I'd go so far as to say that some slash fics have been influential on the fandom as a whole as well, not just the slash portion. It's a still-shifting list--I tend to emphasize older stories, since I can see echoes in current stories occasionally from those, and Pearl-o is better at picking out later stories she felt seriously influenced current fandom trends.
When I say 'trends', I'm not saying 'copying the concept of a story' or even borrowing fanon. Again, it comes out more often in how authors choose to characterize and among CLexers, how they choose to view the relationship as a whole, and then the trend to be reactive to that trend and write the opposite, and really, I have far too much fun in this. I'd probably be much better at observing it if I wasn't so damn reactive myself. Possibly the only thing that could ever lure me from active writing would be just being able to sit back and watch this.
It's nice my attention span is so short that I know I'd get bored doing that in under two weeks. I like to write.
But anyway.
I did manage to seriously annoy someone one night making a very random observation on fanon in fanfic. Which I found kind of frustrating. Originality in plot is all well and good, but excellence in writing beats originality with a two by four most of the time. I think originality is highly overrated, I suppose. I mean, it's nice when someone writes something totally new, but it's not a benchmark for quality. I'm still shuddering over some experimental fic I picked up once in an anthology. Which may just show my plebian taste or my preference for stories that, you know, ARE stories. Since the point, at least for me, is to entertain AND say something interesting, with the emphasis being on entertain. I don't see the point of just doing the latter alone.
And that sound was someone lining me up for a shot. Hold on, I'm not finished.
There was, is, and will always be a criticism of the use of fanon in fanfic, just like authors of non-fanfic criticize fanfic for being derivative of a show/movie/book/comics instead of original creations. In other words, I've spent too much time on the Ellis forums wondering if half the people criticizing fanfic had ever actually read any. It makes me wonder what they started out writing, or if they write at all. Even my original work bears the stamp of influences from television, books, etc--I really can't escape it, popular culture is part of who I am, and to be honest, I don't want to escape it.
Right, wandering off topic. As I said, rambling.
Anyway, being incurably curious about my own tradition and influences, I flicked around to check out who I've been borrowing from all this last year of fanfic writing. It turns out the biggest three are about what I expected--Te's Past Grief and Koi's Mercy (especially for The Wasteland, though I'm not sure how obvious that is). But those are the ones I remember specifically because they were great, massive pianos that dropped on my head, not the ones that sink into the subconscious and come out in unexpected ways.
Lanning's Identical series, for example--I KNOW I've internalized that one big time, especially her Lex, though I can't point out where and how, since I just don't have that kind of objectivity in my own work. Destina's Chrysalis, definitely, for the Lex there, and of course, my personal Must Read List, which is somewhere in my diary but I just can't face looking for it right now, God there are a lot of entries. Jane St. Clair's Ozone is another one, and again, that's the ones I can REMEMBER giving me ideas.
I meta alot, don't I?
Ones that really surprised me, however, because I didn't catch them as being so specific, are ones I seriously seem to internalize--Sarah T and Livia seem to have actually left some skid marks across my ability to form a story and story idea. I've always admired their work, though I didn't always relate to the characterizations as well as I probably should have, but especially with Sarah T's Immanence, I picked up a lot more generalized understanding of and sympathy for Clark.
Livia just hits me with baseball bats whenever I start showing re-emerging Clark Issues.
But that's not the end of it. *sighs*
Honestly, I have the sneaking suspicion that if I've read a story and liked it, I internalize pieces of it, whether I know I'm doing it or not. And I think that comes out when I write. It's not exactly a secret that in SV, I'm very reactive to what I read, moreso than I was in X-Men, which had a smaller pool of writers and an even smaller pool of writers I could stand to read without wishing for blunt sporks to ease the pain. Or in Voyager, actually, since there I neither social nor did I read as extensively and thoroughly, which I think was one of the main reasons I burned out on the fandom well before I'd actually run out of ideas.
*grins* Community. Not necessarily in social terms, though God knows, I'm losing my proud anti-social stance by leaps and bounds, but in artistic terms. A single, very powerful, and condensed group of writers who both influence through their fic and their thoughts ON fic and the show.
I'm just easy to amuse today. Feel free to discard as a testament to me avoiding going anywhere near Common Spaces.
Speaking of Standing in the Common Spaces, I think the beta I had for that fic is in a serious time crunch and doesn't have time to beta and I hate to push someone who jsut doesn't have time. Anyone out there have time and sufficent interest in beta'ing a crossover fic? It's--*swallows*--Smallville/Spiderman (there HAVE been weirder crossovers!), futurefic, and about sixty pages/twenty-three thousand words, though you will be asked to muse on the ending with me, since I'm having my usual Ending Issues, as well as over pacing, structure, and well, the usual. Though I did spellcheck this time first. Really.
And for those following My Longing for the Foley's Teddy Bear That Wears Cute Glasses....
Teddy Bear Icons I've been working on. I have one more set to go. Damn page only had sixty bear pictures! I shall go looking for more. Many, many more. Until I burn that bear obsession RIGHT outta here.
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From:Erm, that would be me, guilty as charged. I sent you an e-mail, but just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I am now totally done with the semester (yay, free time!), and you should be getting something from me later this evening.
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