victory is an elusive whore
The thing is, given any current time you are bound to feel certain ways, and even though you feel that way now, you won't feel that way forever. So when I say all of these things, I already know that I might feel differently later. I'm always surprised at the number of people who feel the need to tell you that you won't feel a certain way forever, that things will pass. That's never helpful for me. It just makes me feel like they think I'm a moron. Though to be fair, it's one of those things to say when you don't know what to say, so it's not like it's horribly offensive to hear, so we should all feel free to keep on saying it. It's okay.
1. Tomorrow (or today, depending on what time it is) is my wedding anniversary. It snuck up on me. And if I recall correctly, the day after is the 23rd anniversary of my grandmother's suicide. I dunno. I discovered the body, which really isn't as ghastly as it sounds (one of my shrinks thought this was a horrific thing), since I was 10 at the time and wasn't really sure what was going on. So, when people say that should be traumatic, I'm not sure if it was or wasn't. But I missed her a lot, and I'm not too keen on the idea that she offed herself, so there you have it.
I would have been celebrating my 7th wedding anniversary. I see that according to one of those lists, I should have gotten Tianyu something made out of wool or copper, or if I am being more modern, a desk set. Okay.
2. I just want to sleep all the time. I'm not really interested in anything. When I lay down I think of things, but when I get up, I just can't be arsed to do them. I wrote my whole porn battle story in my head (it was post pregnancy Gwen going to the storage space where Ianto's stuff is, tying her legs to his bar stool with his ties, blindfolding herself and gagging herself with his ties, then putting a dildo in and threading his ties between her legs and tugging and fucking herself on the stool). I hope you enjoyed that, because I can't be arsed to type it out. I'm writing the Big Bang (90K thereabouts, presently), but the way I feel right now I may not post it. What's the point? I'm sure I'll feel differently in September.
3. I was gung-ho about writing for hire because I like to write fast and funny and sexy. I don't believe in non-genre fiction, I read it, but I don't believe much in major publishing houses, so I thought I'd try this and see how much money I could make, see if it can actually be a career. But people who don't know me reminded me of things about myself that aren't actually true, and that stirred up a few things that are actually true, so I don't think I'll do it.
4. My mom told me recently that I'm too hard on myself. I don't know when this started. But in the words of Black Panther: "If someone else could have wrote it, how am I exceptional?" And since I am a perfectionist, or try to present that fact to the world, I have two modes: invisible and competent. Or at least I try to present those two faces. And if I am unsure that I'll be the second, I default to the first.
5. This brings me to two things that have been bothering me about online life: I don't like people. Really. I like very few people and that's not your fault. I am sure that you are nice enough, pleasant enough. I am sure that you get along well with others. I'm not wired that way. I like INTERACTING with you, hanging with you, but I'm not sure we're remotely compatible, is really rather what I mean. I'm not actually interested in social or political causes because I believe that deep down, shit only happens gradually and that is because most people can't be arsed to think beyond the scope of themselves. This ties in with my gas pump thing, but that's for another day.
The reason I don't comment on most people's posts when they are making social commentary is because I find I overwhelmingly disagree with almost everything I read for one reason or another. But, I don't like to argue. I assume that if you make a statement about something, you have thought about it and this is the decision that you have arrived at, and there's no point in disagreeing with you for debate. You've thought about it already.
Now, if you ask a question or open the floor for debate, then obviously I understand that you want other people's input, but it's not going to be mine. Trust me. I don't want to argue with you.
That said, I find it interesting that the default for posts like these, where a person states how they feel/what they think about X is actually perceived as an invite to debate. It's my journal. I'm stating how I feel. I'm not opening the floor to anything. If I were, I would be asking, "What do you think?"
So it's not that I don't like you, it that you make me not like myself. I see you all, with your posts and your vitalism, and I think, Jesus, the masses have spoken, and I don't agree with anything. But the fact is that most of us are thrown together in fandom because of a shared fictional love, and that doesn't mean that we actually have anything in common.
The reality though is that you are all a fraction of fandom and also a fraction of people and therefore a small and erratic sampling. Not a good thing to base a self-analysis on. Plus, you're an online persona.
I dunno about you, but who you see of me is not who I am in real life. In real life, yeah, I'm funny, and the stories I tell about my life are true, but I am nothing like you really see. The internet makes me bold. Last summer I knocked the screen out of my window, and I haven't called my landlord yet to have it fixed because I don't want to inconvenience them. I don't call my dentist to make an appointment, because I don't want to get yelled out for not being there for so long. I wait to pay bills until the last minute because I am afraid of writing checks, even thought the money is there. I don't get a job because I am afraid of the interview process. And I am not going to write genre fic for money because I am afraid that they will reject it. I know me. I won't even bother.
Does that sound like Amand-r to you? Because if you knew me, you would never, ever be afraid of me. Fandom and the internet makes me bold.
I was thinking about Sartre's No Exit, and how when he said, "Hell is other people" he didn't mean that other people are the problem. What he meant, in the context of the play and in social life is that when we are viewed by others, we are being perceived by others, and then we are we are being judged, just by observation, and we are aware that we are being viewed and therefore judged.
What he said was, We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us.
And just in case I'm wrong and my previous summation is not what he meant, and someone wants to debate it with me, 1. Remember what I said earlier. I don't care, and 2. Even if that's not precisely it, that is the concept that I am going with and in the end Sartre doesn't matter in the idea of it all.
I look at you all, I see how you go through life and I think to myself that I am not like that. You publish, you teach, you write and you have no problems submitting your stuff for review. You go to work and shows and concerts and you have significant others. I don't do those things because really, I don't think I can anymore. Even when I was teaching, I was barely holding it together. I had someone to talk to, Tianyu, and that made it better, but I wasn't able to be…you. I don't laugh things off. I don't have people criticize my job and then just shrug and say, well, I'll fix it. It should have been right the first time.
The last husband I had I played an important part in his demise. And even if that isn't true, I think it's true. I think about it every day.
But you all function, and just watching you, reading you, makes me judge myself, and I am lacking. A lot. And then I think of what you think of me, how I am perceived, and that just makes it worse.
ANYWAY, That's how it feels. Every day. I am deficient. I am aware a hundred percent what my faults are. I think about them every day, and so when people take the time to remind me of what they are for whatever reason, it's nothing new, and I think to myself, "Jesus, I'm working on it, could you fucking leave it alone?" It's not their fault. It's probably the first time they've got the chance to say it to me, but trust me, I've been thinking about it, and you didn't even have to help.
This brings me to the other thing that I have addressed from time to time in fandom, and I'm going to make my official stand on, if I never have before:
Unsolicited Concrit.* I don't want it. And I'll tell you why.
I don't care what you want out of fandom, out of writing. Writing for money and publication, and writing for fandom are two different things for me. If an editor looks at my work (and strangely I have never had an issue with concrit when submitting short stories or poetry for publication or concrit, even in classes and workshops) for a money situation, that's different. It's a thing, for money. I started writing it differently. I started with the mindset that I was going to sell it. It's like surrogating a baby; you go in knowing you're a surrogate, so you prepare yourself differently for the birth.
But fandom, fanfic is how I express my interaction with a text. It's how the text makes me feel or think. Any given story (even the porn ones) are branches of the way my brain thinks or feels about something that I love, something I do for entertainment. Style choices are deliberate. Sometimes I do things with words that aren't right. I use the punctuation rule that isn't technically correct because it still makes more sense than the one that's officially in place. Most of the time (not always because I occasionally make brain mistakes, like using lathe instead of lave. Ouch), I said exactly what I meant to say, exactly how I meant to say it. Sometimes I deliberately use a different style, sometimes I use a different POV. Sometimes I watch an ep so it's fresh in my mind and then listen to Colour me Badd right after while I'm writing, just to see what the end result will be. Sometimes it's less about the characters and more about trying to imitate a style I read recently. It's all an experiment. It's how I talk to you. If I use a beta that means something. If I don't use a beta, that means something too.
This doesn't mean that it's perfect, it means that it is what it is. I look back sometimes and see things that I want to do differently, things I didn't think would work, but that's my job to do in fanfic, not yours. So when people offer me concrit, I think to myself, "Who the hell do you think you are?" You assume that people want it because there's some myth that people writing fanfic want to improve their writing skills and they're using fanfic to do it. More importantly, that you are part of it because you read it. (And I do use fanfic to improve, but it's more of a self-analysis--Do I think I've gotten better? Sure. Time and constant writing and self analysis and study and occasional invited crit on selected things makes one better, sometimes, whether you want to or not. If you run every day you're bound to get faster.)
It's true, you are a part of it because you read it, but you weren't the creator, you weren't involved in the creative process that brought out the finished product, so in some ways I'm not all that sure I care if you think I did something wrong.
I don't offer concrit on fic ever unless it's asked for, because I see it as criticizing someone's fetish. I have a lot of stuff I won't read, and a lot of stuff I back out of, but I don't crit it because it's not my place. I don't know what they get out of fanfic, what they get out of posting it. I don't go to an exhibitionist club and mark up people's naked bodies with a pen, even if I think they're ugly. Because that's not what that's for.
If you liked the fic, that's cool. If you didn't, that is also cool. But I resent that people assume you want crit, and when you say that you don't, or if, when it's offered, you disagree, that stamps you with the "Discontent-cannot take crit" logo. Some of you just give bad and useless fucking crit.
Sometimes it's out of left field, and that means that your take on the whole process from the ground up is bad. I don't like Janto fic. I never have, never will. We approach the text differently. They see things I don't see. Think of it as watching a show with the slash goggles. We see things differently. Think of someone like karaokegal. I don't always agree with her take on Jack, because we don't agree on the fundamentals of his character. But see, that's okay. That's her right. But it guarantees that she might not like a lot of my fic and that I don't like a lot of hers. I'm not about to march over to her lj and say, "Your Jack is OOC." That's ridiculous.
I had someone tell me that my VS ep read more like fanfic than an episode. I get what s/he meant, but I have to disagree, because it was all fucking fanfic. The whole VS, as awesome as it was, had as much in common with a season of Torchwood as any fanfic with a plot. It was 13 consecutive stories with some great arcs and OCs and plots, but it wasn't written with episodes in mind. If it were, we would have timed each ep in length, taken casting and payment and special effects budgets in mind, because that's what drives a show. In the end. The scripts are written and rewritten multiple times through the process, as they have to adjust those things. We had the luxury of ignoring that, because we were writing fanfic.
So yeah, person, it read like fanfic. So what? It was never going to be an episode. I didn't have to think like an ep writer or RTD, cutting character to save CGI, or vice versa. I didn't have to worry about time or how many extras I might need to pay or where to put the craft services table so that John's plums stayed nice and cool. And because of that, I wrote a great story that met some of the episodic requirements (stayed in arc, had a plot, had consistent characters). I dunno. I approached the concept of different writers in the whole VS thing like getting a comic series in which every ep is done by a different writer and artist, like DC's 52.
After I had this discussion, I thought about it and said, "Mander, you don't take crit well." No, you know what? That wasn't crit. That was an observation based on differing ground up views of the whole originating concept of something, and so in the end, it's a stalemate in which neither side is wrong.
So no, person who said I don't take crit well, I don't like fanfic crit. I think unsolicited crit is presumptuous. You don't stop to think about why the person wrote the fic. You don't think about what they're trying to accomplish. You're just thinking about what YOU try to do when you write fic, and you shove everyone in that template.
I don't assume. I don't know what Nick gets out of writing, even though he's one of my BFFs, I have never asked. I don't know what Foxy or Copperbadge or Queenfanfiction get out of their fanfic writing, because I have never asked, but until I do, and until they ask me specifically to give it, I'm not criting their work unsolicited.
More importantly, I don't assume that I know a person and how they are in real life based on how their online persona acts. Jesus, most of us know each other through fake one-word names. Why would we ever presume to know what someone is like in real life based on how they act online? So stop telling me what I am.
That was a lot.
6. Really, that was a lot.
7. If you're still here, really, I don't hate you all or anything. I just…I don't know how to deal with all of you and your perfect faces. Your perfect online faces. It's like smoking because you say, "Well, Gambit smokes and he never gets sick and he's in great shape." HE'S A FUCKING COMIC BOOK CHARACTER.
8. Still.
So yeah.
*I want to make it clear that by concrit I mean "constructive criticism", and not just vague discussion in the comments to a fic. I've had some great conversations about fantext in the comments, and I always welcome that because fic is a dialogue. What I mean is things like, "I really don't think X worked here for me, the way you did it because X and X. Oh and by the way, we don't say 'brick'. We say 'gassplaxetechque.'
1. Tomorrow (or today, depending on what time it is) is my wedding anniversary. It snuck up on me. And if I recall correctly, the day after is the 23rd anniversary of my grandmother's suicide. I dunno. I discovered the body, which really isn't as ghastly as it sounds (one of my shrinks thought this was a horrific thing), since I was 10 at the time and wasn't really sure what was going on. So, when people say that should be traumatic, I'm not sure if it was or wasn't. But I missed her a lot, and I'm not too keen on the idea that she offed herself, so there you have it.
I would have been celebrating my 7th wedding anniversary. I see that according to one of those lists, I should have gotten Tianyu something made out of wool or copper, or if I am being more modern, a desk set. Okay.
2. I just want to sleep all the time. I'm not really interested in anything. When I lay down I think of things, but when I get up, I just can't be arsed to do them. I wrote my whole porn battle story in my head (it was post pregnancy Gwen going to the storage space where Ianto's stuff is, tying her legs to his bar stool with his ties, blindfolding herself and gagging herself with his ties, then putting a dildo in and threading his ties between her legs and tugging and fucking herself on the stool). I hope you enjoyed that, because I can't be arsed to type it out. I'm writing the Big Bang (90K thereabouts, presently), but the way I feel right now I may not post it. What's the point? I'm sure I'll feel differently in September.
3. I was gung-ho about writing for hire because I like to write fast and funny and sexy. I don't believe in non-genre fiction, I read it, but I don't believe much in major publishing houses, so I thought I'd try this and see how much money I could make, see if it can actually be a career. But people who don't know me reminded me of things about myself that aren't actually true, and that stirred up a few things that are actually true, so I don't think I'll do it.
4. My mom told me recently that I'm too hard on myself. I don't know when this started. But in the words of Black Panther: "If someone else could have wrote it, how am I exceptional?" And since I am a perfectionist, or try to present that fact to the world, I have two modes: invisible and competent. Or at least I try to present those two faces. And if I am unsure that I'll be the second, I default to the first.
5. This brings me to two things that have been bothering me about online life: I don't like people. Really. I like very few people and that's not your fault. I am sure that you are nice enough, pleasant enough. I am sure that you get along well with others. I'm not wired that way. I like INTERACTING with you, hanging with you, but I'm not sure we're remotely compatible, is really rather what I mean. I'm not actually interested in social or political causes because I believe that deep down, shit only happens gradually and that is because most people can't be arsed to think beyond the scope of themselves. This ties in with my gas pump thing, but that's for another day.
The reason I don't comment on most people's posts when they are making social commentary is because I find I overwhelmingly disagree with almost everything I read for one reason or another. But, I don't like to argue. I assume that if you make a statement about something, you have thought about it and this is the decision that you have arrived at, and there's no point in disagreeing with you for debate. You've thought about it already.
Now, if you ask a question or open the floor for debate, then obviously I understand that you want other people's input, but it's not going to be mine. Trust me. I don't want to argue with you.
That said, I find it interesting that the default for posts like these, where a person states how they feel/what they think about X is actually perceived as an invite to debate. It's my journal. I'm stating how I feel. I'm not opening the floor to anything. If I were, I would be asking, "What do you think?"
So it's not that I don't like you, it that you make me not like myself. I see you all, with your posts and your vitalism, and I think, Jesus, the masses have spoken, and I don't agree with anything. But the fact is that most of us are thrown together in fandom because of a shared fictional love, and that doesn't mean that we actually have anything in common.
The reality though is that you are all a fraction of fandom and also a fraction of people and therefore a small and erratic sampling. Not a good thing to base a self-analysis on. Plus, you're an online persona.
I dunno about you, but who you see of me is not who I am in real life. In real life, yeah, I'm funny, and the stories I tell about my life are true, but I am nothing like you really see. The internet makes me bold. Last summer I knocked the screen out of my window, and I haven't called my landlord yet to have it fixed because I don't want to inconvenience them. I don't call my dentist to make an appointment, because I don't want to get yelled out for not being there for so long. I wait to pay bills until the last minute because I am afraid of writing checks, even thought the money is there. I don't get a job because I am afraid of the interview process. And I am not going to write genre fic for money because I am afraid that they will reject it. I know me. I won't even bother.
Does that sound like Amand-r to you? Because if you knew me, you would never, ever be afraid of me. Fandom and the internet makes me bold.
I was thinking about Sartre's No Exit, and how when he said, "Hell is other people" he didn't mean that other people are the problem. What he meant, in the context of the play and in social life is that when we are viewed by others, we are being perceived by others, and then we are we are being judged, just by observation, and we are aware that we are being viewed and therefore judged.
What he said was, We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us.
And just in case I'm wrong and my previous summation is not what he meant, and someone wants to debate it with me, 1. Remember what I said earlier. I don't care, and 2. Even if that's not precisely it, that is the concept that I am going with and in the end Sartre doesn't matter in the idea of it all.
I look at you all, I see how you go through life and I think to myself that I am not like that. You publish, you teach, you write and you have no problems submitting your stuff for review. You go to work and shows and concerts and you have significant others. I don't do those things because really, I don't think I can anymore. Even when I was teaching, I was barely holding it together. I had someone to talk to, Tianyu, and that made it better, but I wasn't able to be…you. I don't laugh things off. I don't have people criticize my job and then just shrug and say, well, I'll fix it. It should have been right the first time.
The last husband I had I played an important part in his demise. And even if that isn't true, I think it's true. I think about it every day.
But you all function, and just watching you, reading you, makes me judge myself, and I am lacking. A lot. And then I think of what you think of me, how I am perceived, and that just makes it worse.
ANYWAY, That's how it feels. Every day. I am deficient. I am aware a hundred percent what my faults are. I think about them every day, and so when people take the time to remind me of what they are for whatever reason, it's nothing new, and I think to myself, "Jesus, I'm working on it, could you fucking leave it alone?" It's not their fault. It's probably the first time they've got the chance to say it to me, but trust me, I've been thinking about it, and you didn't even have to help.
This brings me to the other thing that I have addressed from time to time in fandom, and I'm going to make my official stand on, if I never have before:
Unsolicited Concrit.* I don't want it. And I'll tell you why.
I don't care what you want out of fandom, out of writing. Writing for money and publication, and writing for fandom are two different things for me. If an editor looks at my work (and strangely I have never had an issue with concrit when submitting short stories or poetry for publication or concrit, even in classes and workshops) for a money situation, that's different. It's a thing, for money. I started writing it differently. I started with the mindset that I was going to sell it. It's like surrogating a baby; you go in knowing you're a surrogate, so you prepare yourself differently for the birth.
But fandom, fanfic is how I express my interaction with a text. It's how the text makes me feel or think. Any given story (even the porn ones) are branches of the way my brain thinks or feels about something that I love, something I do for entertainment. Style choices are deliberate. Sometimes I do things with words that aren't right. I use the punctuation rule that isn't technically correct because it still makes more sense than the one that's officially in place. Most of the time (not always because I occasionally make brain mistakes, like using lathe instead of lave. Ouch), I said exactly what I meant to say, exactly how I meant to say it. Sometimes I deliberately use a different style, sometimes I use a different POV. Sometimes I watch an ep so it's fresh in my mind and then listen to Colour me Badd right after while I'm writing, just to see what the end result will be. Sometimes it's less about the characters and more about trying to imitate a style I read recently. It's all an experiment. It's how I talk to you. If I use a beta that means something. If I don't use a beta, that means something too.
This doesn't mean that it's perfect, it means that it is what it is. I look back sometimes and see things that I want to do differently, things I didn't think would work, but that's my job to do in fanfic, not yours. So when people offer me concrit, I think to myself, "Who the hell do you think you are?" You assume that people want it because there's some myth that people writing fanfic want to improve their writing skills and they're using fanfic to do it. More importantly, that you are part of it because you read it. (And I do use fanfic to improve, but it's more of a self-analysis--Do I think I've gotten better? Sure. Time and constant writing and self analysis and study and occasional invited crit on selected things makes one better, sometimes, whether you want to or not. If you run every day you're bound to get faster.)
It's true, you are a part of it because you read it, but you weren't the creator, you weren't involved in the creative process that brought out the finished product, so in some ways I'm not all that sure I care if you think I did something wrong.
I don't offer concrit on fic ever unless it's asked for, because I see it as criticizing someone's fetish. I have a lot of stuff I won't read, and a lot of stuff I back out of, but I don't crit it because it's not my place. I don't know what they get out of fanfic, what they get out of posting it. I don't go to an exhibitionist club and mark up people's naked bodies with a pen, even if I think they're ugly. Because that's not what that's for.
If you liked the fic, that's cool. If you didn't, that is also cool. But I resent that people assume you want crit, and when you say that you don't, or if, when it's offered, you disagree, that stamps you with the "Discontent-cannot take crit" logo. Some of you just give bad and useless fucking crit.
Sometimes it's out of left field, and that means that your take on the whole process from the ground up is bad. I don't like Janto fic. I never have, never will. We approach the text differently. They see things I don't see. Think of it as watching a show with the slash goggles. We see things differently. Think of someone like karaokegal. I don't always agree with her take on Jack, because we don't agree on the fundamentals of his character. But see, that's okay. That's her right. But it guarantees that she might not like a lot of my fic and that I don't like a lot of hers. I'm not about to march over to her lj and say, "Your Jack is OOC." That's ridiculous.
I had someone tell me that my VS ep read more like fanfic than an episode. I get what s/he meant, but I have to disagree, because it was all fucking fanfic. The whole VS, as awesome as it was, had as much in common with a season of Torchwood as any fanfic with a plot. It was 13 consecutive stories with some great arcs and OCs and plots, but it wasn't written with episodes in mind. If it were, we would have timed each ep in length, taken casting and payment and special effects budgets in mind, because that's what drives a show. In the end. The scripts are written and rewritten multiple times through the process, as they have to adjust those things. We had the luxury of ignoring that, because we were writing fanfic.
So yeah, person, it read like fanfic. So what? It was never going to be an episode. I didn't have to think like an ep writer or RTD, cutting character to save CGI, or vice versa. I didn't have to worry about time or how many extras I might need to pay or where to put the craft services table so that John's plums stayed nice and cool. And because of that, I wrote a great story that met some of the episodic requirements (stayed in arc, had a plot, had consistent characters). I dunno. I approached the concept of different writers in the whole VS thing like getting a comic series in which every ep is done by a different writer and artist, like DC's 52.
After I had this discussion, I thought about it and said, "Mander, you don't take crit well." No, you know what? That wasn't crit. That was an observation based on differing ground up views of the whole originating concept of something, and so in the end, it's a stalemate in which neither side is wrong.
So no, person who said I don't take crit well, I don't like fanfic crit. I think unsolicited crit is presumptuous. You don't stop to think about why the person wrote the fic. You don't think about what they're trying to accomplish. You're just thinking about what YOU try to do when you write fic, and you shove everyone in that template.
I don't assume. I don't know what Nick gets out of writing, even though he's one of my BFFs, I have never asked. I don't know what Foxy or Copperbadge or Queenfanfiction get out of their fanfic writing, because I have never asked, but until I do, and until they ask me specifically to give it, I'm not criting their work unsolicited.
More importantly, I don't assume that I know a person and how they are in real life based on how their online persona acts. Jesus, most of us know each other through fake one-word names. Why would we ever presume to know what someone is like in real life based on how they act online? So stop telling me what I am.
That was a lot.
6. Really, that was a lot.
7. If you're still here, really, I don't hate you all or anything. I just…I don't know how to deal with all of you and your perfect faces. Your perfect online faces. It's like smoking because you say, "Well, Gambit smokes and he never gets sick and he's in great shape." HE'S A FUCKING COMIC BOOK CHARACTER.
8. Still.
So yeah.
*I want to make it clear that by concrit I mean "constructive criticism", and not just vague discussion in the comments to a fic. I've had some great conversations about fantext in the comments, and I always welcome that because fic is a dialogue. What I mean is things like, "I really don't think X worked here for me, the way you did it because X and X. Oh and by the way, we don't say 'brick'. We say 'gassplaxetechque.'