POP QUIZ
Or not. I was going to make this a poll with radio buttons-"Which of the following embarrassing sentences did bironic not write once upon a time"-but you know what? I had too much fun picking out passages. So: All of the following come from stories I wrote between the ages of about 13 and 18. Hope you enjoy.
Warning for indirect references to noncon. Also bad writing.
Vampire Chronicles, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate movie and original fic. Oh, my darling Mary Sues, angst and artsy run-on sentences...
Her lower lip trembled and tears threatened to spill. He settled down next to her, holding her to him so she would be comfortable. Oh, the helpless feeling he had; all he wanted to do was make her feel better, get her to smile, something!
he was about to strike when a strange thing happened, something he had not expected: in desperation she shut her eyes and concentrated, and armand saw her thoughts. he was inside reannon’s body, [implausible non-con deleted]. “my God...” the mood snapped in armand, something broken and tearing at him, and he felt his mouth open slightly. “no, don’t cry, i’m sorry” only made the tears fall faster, she squeezed her eyes shut and wept quietly but fiercely, clutching at her stomach in agony with her newly freed arms. armand could not stand it. he gathered her up once again and she fought against him. “shh, don’t worry, i won’t do anything, i won’t, i swear it, it was a foolish thing to do, i had no idea.” she gave in and wept in his arms, which is how it should have been in the first place, they both agreed separately and silently on that.
Frowning, he kicked me hard in the side and I think I made a sound but I don’t remember because it hurt very much.
Willow tried to push herself up on shaking arms with a pitiful “Giles…” and he gathered her small frame to him almost roughly, searching for a blanket or something with which to cover her shredded clothing. There was a small pool of blood on the floor underneath her and a bruise was rapidly forming above her left eyebrow.
Blindly I grabbed the gun, they were finished now, he raised his hand to strike her and I hit him over the head and he fell to the side.
Her innocence almost, almost turned the god from his deed. But not quite.
The Gul reached out and, when the mother allowed, gently, ever so softly, ran his fingers across the baby’s head. Karin placed her hand over Dukat’s.
“She-she has your eyes,” she said.
“And your mouth.” Dukat’s own eyes were wide and soft before he caught himself. Odo still watched.
“Julienne Dukat Moreau.” Karin was so full of obvious love that I couldn’t help but smile.
“Perhaps that was my problem, Marius. It was wrong of me, quite spoiled actually.” Armand whispered sheepishly up to Marius. “I’m sorry.”
The constable’s face lit up though he obviously attempted to hide that as well, taking the baby gingerly into his arms. I wondered if the little girl reminded him of the time he’d taken care of the infant changeling. Whatever, I had a job to do.
“I never dared to believe that you were real, but Heaven knows I dreamed of it,” she admitted finally. “I feel safe with you… and yet dizzy, like I’m under a spell.”
“The scratching sound grew louder, and I tried to go back to sleep. I thought it was a raccoon, or maybe a stray dog, but something made me feel in danger. I probably should have listened to myself, but- Anyway, I tried to go back to sleep but then something fell outside and cursed.
“Now, dogs and raccoons do not curse. I was really scared now, and I climbed out of bed.”
It fit her perfectly, more than perfectly, and Marius didn’t know what to say. It was a lavender sundress, sleeveless and short- down to her upper thighs- which showed off her amazing figure. The green flecks in her brown eyes stood out with the leaves of the flower pattern. She was gorgeous.
“I don’t know where this is headed any more than you do, my love. I only know that nothing could make me happier than dancing with you on the beach until sunrise.”
[…] Marius kissed her eyelids, her hair, her cheek. He ran his lips down to her chin, and that’s when he tasted her tears.
“Have I hurt you? What’s wrong?” She shook her head and pushed his hand back to her face. He drew in closer and kissed her lightly, gently on the lips. Her warmth! How must he feel to her, a cold and hard thing?
Her mouth was open, features frozen forever in an expression of horror. There were two marks on her neck. Vampire wounds. His own mouth dropped open. “Ann...” he whispered. “Reannon... No!” he screamed to the ocean and sand. He held her close to him and stroked her hair. “No...” He kissed her lips tenderly; they were still warm. Tears ran freely down his face.
Though we often said we wished that once, just once, these drills would be real, it wasn’t quite as amusing as we’d thought. What if someone got hurt? What if our things were destroyed? What if school were to be closed for a long time? This fire bell was different than past ones.
It was a bell which would change my life.
The man’s gaze was boring into me and I supressed a shudder. It was like staring into the face of death itself. Death carrying a handgun.
Shortly Serena’s eyes opened and caught mine, two humiliated gazes fixed on each other in mutual pain, in their own world where neither was being exploited and time stood still.
She burst into tears, burying her face in the mattress as she curled up and wept with all her tortured soul. Tears came to my own eyes and I didn’t stop them-wasn’t it my own fault that she was in such pain, after all?
(I wish I had my other laptop with me. There's a lot more on there.)
The moral: Although it may happen on what feels like a geologic timescale, our writing does change and improve as the years go by.
Despite the above, I do want to say that I still read my old writing, that most of it is better than these excerpts suggest, and that every single story in those archives on my computer still has something I love-something that's true to me and/or to the characters, something that still moves me after all these years, after all the growing I've done. There's something much more personal in these stories than in a lot of my posted fanfiction, because they were written at a time when I didn't have an audience; they were for me (and very rarely for very close friends, with one big exception), and I wrote about what I wanted to, no matter how angsty or depraved or silly or clichéd or egotistical or anything. It didn't matter if the girl was an idealized stand-in for myself. Most of the time that was the point; or I realized what I'd done halfway through the writing process, or even years later. The situations were exploratory, reflective, deeply personal, sometimes scary, sometimes thrilling, always honest. It didn't matter if the story never got finished, once I'd written the part(s) I wanted to. It didn't matter if the story consisted of multiple disjointed scenes that contradicted one another. It didn't matter if I repeated themes from one story/universe to another.
There's a reason I reread these stories far more than I reread my posted fic, even though it's the latter that I'm more proud of.
Fanfic-or more accurately, posted fanfic, fanfic on LJ-is another sort of creature for me. These are complete stories, with a beginning and middle and end; Mary Sue-free; emotionally subdued or understated; mundane rather than melodramatic; short; written in the third person; very carefully constructed; often gen or slash rather than het (would any of you have guessed that the majority of what I used to write, and still sometimes write when I revive the desire to write something just for myself, is kinky Mary Sue het noncon?). These have to have a point to make about the characters. They have to be good. They're going to be seen by other people, and I'll be judged by them. If they're going to be about me and/or my desires, they have to be constructed in a way that perfectly suits the canon characters. Goes my thinking.
This was what I was getting at the other week when I mentioned that my creativity has been stifled for a few years in part because of audience problems, whether real or imagined. What I meant was this: When I try to write fanfic for posting now, all the LJ fandom people and their stories and comments are in my head with me. This causes two problems: one, when I sit down to write a story, it's hard to tune out the background noise of other people's ideas and characterizations and find my own; and two, I'm thinking about what people's reactions to the writing might be when I finish and post, which makes me nervous about phrasing and originality and maturity and-just about everything, and can shut me down before I've gotten very far, or as I get near the end. It affects the kind of stories I write, too. PWPs tend to die ugly unfinished deaths, if they even reach birth. I've become self-conscious about posting stories whose main point is sex, as if I'll be respected less for it. (Which is stupid; I know this; I read plenty of PWPs and love them and their authors; but there it is.) And it has affected my stories-for-myself writing. People are still with me in my head when I open up those old files or a new document, and when I do manage to clear them away, it's still hard not to think things like, "Well, if I like this when it's done, maybe I can post it," which brings back the audience-reception nerves. I've never gone so long without writing my own stuff as I have since joining the LJ community. Overall, LJ has been an unquestionably positive influence-for one thing, my writing has improved in many ways, and I don't think anyone wants to write snippets of Mary Sue stories for their entire lives-but I've also lost what used to be my greatest outlet. One of the things I want to get back to this year, as school decimates my online time and pushes me back into myself while upping the stress levels that once led to writing, is the for-my-eyes-only stuff. Maybe relearning how to do that will rekindle the fic-to-be-posted "muse"; maybe it won't; but I would like to get back in touch with that part of myself that has lain dormant for so many years.
Warning for indirect references to noncon. Also bad writing.
Vampire Chronicles, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate movie and original fic. Oh, my darling Mary Sues, angst and artsy run-on sentences...
Her lower lip trembled and tears threatened to spill. He settled down next to her, holding her to him so she would be comfortable. Oh, the helpless feeling he had; all he wanted to do was make her feel better, get her to smile, something!
he was about to strike when a strange thing happened, something he had not expected: in desperation she shut her eyes and concentrated, and armand saw her thoughts. he was inside reannon’s body, [implausible non-con deleted]. “my God...” the mood snapped in armand, something broken and tearing at him, and he felt his mouth open slightly. “no, don’t cry, i’m sorry” only made the tears fall faster, she squeezed her eyes shut and wept quietly but fiercely, clutching at her stomach in agony with her newly freed arms. armand could not stand it. he gathered her up once again and she fought against him. “shh, don’t worry, i won’t do anything, i won’t, i swear it, it was a foolish thing to do, i had no idea.” she gave in and wept in his arms, which is how it should have been in the first place, they both agreed separately and silently on that.
Frowning, he kicked me hard in the side and I think I made a sound but I don’t remember because it hurt very much.
Willow tried to push herself up on shaking arms with a pitiful “Giles…” and he gathered her small frame to him almost roughly, searching for a blanket or something with which to cover her shredded clothing. There was a small pool of blood on the floor underneath her and a bruise was rapidly forming above her left eyebrow.
Blindly I grabbed the gun, they were finished now, he raised his hand to strike her and I hit him over the head and he fell to the side.
Her innocence almost, almost turned the god from his deed. But not quite.
The Gul reached out and, when the mother allowed, gently, ever so softly, ran his fingers across the baby’s head. Karin placed her hand over Dukat’s.
“She-she has your eyes,” she said.
“And your mouth.” Dukat’s own eyes were wide and soft before he caught himself. Odo still watched.
“Julienne Dukat Moreau.” Karin was so full of obvious love that I couldn’t help but smile.
“Perhaps that was my problem, Marius. It was wrong of me, quite spoiled actually.” Armand whispered sheepishly up to Marius. “I’m sorry.”
The constable’s face lit up though he obviously attempted to hide that as well, taking the baby gingerly into his arms. I wondered if the little girl reminded him of the time he’d taken care of the infant changeling. Whatever, I had a job to do.
“I never dared to believe that you were real, but Heaven knows I dreamed of it,” she admitted finally. “I feel safe with you… and yet dizzy, like I’m under a spell.”
“The scratching sound grew louder, and I tried to go back to sleep. I thought it was a raccoon, or maybe a stray dog, but something made me feel in danger. I probably should have listened to myself, but- Anyway, I tried to go back to sleep but then something fell outside and cursed.
“Now, dogs and raccoons do not curse. I was really scared now, and I climbed out of bed.”
It fit her perfectly, more than perfectly, and Marius didn’t know what to say. It was a lavender sundress, sleeveless and short- down to her upper thighs- which showed off her amazing figure. The green flecks in her brown eyes stood out with the leaves of the flower pattern. She was gorgeous.
“I don’t know where this is headed any more than you do, my love. I only know that nothing could make me happier than dancing with you on the beach until sunrise.”
[…] Marius kissed her eyelids, her hair, her cheek. He ran his lips down to her chin, and that’s when he tasted her tears.
“Have I hurt you? What’s wrong?” She shook her head and pushed his hand back to her face. He drew in closer and kissed her lightly, gently on the lips. Her warmth! How must he feel to her, a cold and hard thing?
Her mouth was open, features frozen forever in an expression of horror. There were two marks on her neck. Vampire wounds. His own mouth dropped open. “Ann...” he whispered. “Reannon... No!” he screamed to the ocean and sand. He held her close to him and stroked her hair. “No...” He kissed her lips tenderly; they were still warm. Tears ran freely down his face.
Though we often said we wished that once, just once, these drills would be real, it wasn’t quite as amusing as we’d thought. What if someone got hurt? What if our things were destroyed? What if school were to be closed for a long time? This fire bell was different than past ones.
It was a bell which would change my life.
The man’s gaze was boring into me and I supressed a shudder. It was like staring into the face of death itself. Death carrying a handgun.
Shortly Serena’s eyes opened and caught mine, two humiliated gazes fixed on each other in mutual pain, in their own world where neither was being exploited and time stood still.
She burst into tears, burying her face in the mattress as she curled up and wept with all her tortured soul. Tears came to my own eyes and I didn’t stop them-wasn’t it my own fault that she was in such pain, after all?
(I wish I had my other laptop with me. There's a lot more on there.)
The moral: Although it may happen on what feels like a geologic timescale, our writing does change and improve as the years go by.
Despite the above, I do want to say that I still read my old writing, that most of it is better than these excerpts suggest, and that every single story in those archives on my computer still has something I love-something that's true to me and/or to the characters, something that still moves me after all these years, after all the growing I've done. There's something much more personal in these stories than in a lot of my posted fanfiction, because they were written at a time when I didn't have an audience; they were for me (and very rarely for very close friends, with one big exception), and I wrote about what I wanted to, no matter how angsty or depraved or silly or clichéd or egotistical or anything. It didn't matter if the girl was an idealized stand-in for myself. Most of the time that was the point; or I realized what I'd done halfway through the writing process, or even years later. The situations were exploratory, reflective, deeply personal, sometimes scary, sometimes thrilling, always honest. It didn't matter if the story never got finished, once I'd written the part(s) I wanted to. It didn't matter if the story consisted of multiple disjointed scenes that contradicted one another. It didn't matter if I repeated themes from one story/universe to another.
There's a reason I reread these stories far more than I reread my posted fic, even though it's the latter that I'm more proud of.
Fanfic-or more accurately, posted fanfic, fanfic on LJ-is another sort of creature for me. These are complete stories, with a beginning and middle and end; Mary Sue-free; emotionally subdued or understated; mundane rather than melodramatic; short; written in the third person; very carefully constructed; often gen or slash rather than het (would any of you have guessed that the majority of what I used to write, and still sometimes write when I revive the desire to write something just for myself, is kinky Mary Sue het noncon?). These have to have a point to make about the characters. They have to be good. They're going to be seen by other people, and I'll be judged by them. If they're going to be about me and/or my desires, they have to be constructed in a way that perfectly suits the canon characters. Goes my thinking.
This was what I was getting at the other week when I mentioned that my creativity has been stifled for a few years in part because of audience problems, whether real or imagined. What I meant was this: When I try to write fanfic for posting now, all the LJ fandom people and their stories and comments are in my head with me. This causes two problems: one, when I sit down to write a story, it's hard to tune out the background noise of other people's ideas and characterizations and find my own; and two, I'm thinking about what people's reactions to the writing might be when I finish and post, which makes me nervous about phrasing and originality and maturity and-just about everything, and can shut me down before I've gotten very far, or as I get near the end. It affects the kind of stories I write, too. PWPs tend to die ugly unfinished deaths, if they even reach birth. I've become self-conscious about posting stories whose main point is sex, as if I'll be respected less for it. (Which is stupid; I know this; I read plenty of PWPs and love them and their authors; but there it is.) And it has affected my stories-for-myself writing. People are still with me in my head when I open up those old files or a new document, and when I do manage to clear them away, it's still hard not to think things like, "Well, if I like this when it's done, maybe I can post it," which brings back the audience-reception nerves. I've never gone so long without writing my own stuff as I have since joining the LJ community. Overall, LJ has been an unquestionably positive influence-for one thing, my writing has improved in many ways, and I don't think anyone wants to write snippets of Mary Sue stories for their entire lives-but I've also lost what used to be my greatest outlet. One of the things I want to get back to this year, as school decimates my online time and pushes me back into myself while upping the stress levels that once led to writing, is the for-my-eyes-only stuff. Maybe relearning how to do that will rekindle the fic-to-be-posted "muse"; maybe it won't; but I would like to get back in touch with that part of myself that has lain dormant for so many years.