Memory Lane
Usually, when I start mucking out my room, I find the old print outs of my fic and my fanart (from high school). I tend to just go "Old shame! Old shame!" and move on. This morning, I decided to read a bit. I guess I wanted to do some literary analysis on myself or something.
The big thing I noticed is just how much I wanted to be clever, or be seen as clever. This writing was for another author's 'verse, and I knew she was a better writer than I was, so I needed to stuff my writing with in-jokes and canon shout-outs and Clever Over Thinking. (PROTIP: If your Clever Over Thinking needs the character to have a one or two paragraph aside in order to talk about said cleverness, then it's probably not that clever. Or necessary.) I still have fits of wanting to make readers go "I see what you did there," but I think I've got it under control. A bit. (Then I do something like "Hacking the Gibson" where people had to look at my cleverness and then... yeah.) Another bad habit I still have is not finishing anything. From my epic Mary Sue to Mercverse arcs and Fanfic 100, all of my fics are works in progress.
I thought about posting up bits for everyone to see, but I feel icky about it. It isn't about the rambly turns of phrase or the fact that the perspecitve (original) character sounds like me in high school (PROTIP: If a guy in his twenties sounds like a bitter teenage high school girl, someone's doing something wrong.), it's more about the fact that the author's still known for this 'verse, and said author and I are on terms of denial. You know, where the parties go along like the other did not exist.
Obviously, I'm not keeping up my part of the bargain. I don't think I can, really. The whole experience, as cliché as it sounds, made me what I am today.
Know what? Fuckit. Old shame time. Of course I'm going to cherry pick for the bits that I'm not too embarassed to post. That's how I roll.
Trying not to cause insane amounts of bodily harm to myself was pretty much the main reason I've never been able to fight with a nodachi. I know the forms, but getting me to use Masamune is like asking me to kill myself.
Soldier OC. Yeah, I was clever, all right.
Those little clumps of grass and weeds that would be a farmer's blight in Gongaga or Wutai are incredible survivors in this city. The skill--or blessing--of survival is vital in order to see the light of another day around here. They breathe the same noxious fumes we do, get whatever sun manages to break through the smog, and the only water they recive is the putrid rain that falls every so often.
Yet, despite the poisons, they live... and look a hell of a lot better than those horrible artifical plants scattered about the base."
I think I was reading/still under the thrall of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I wrote this bit. (Not that it counts, since I love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but this must've been around the first time I read it that I wrote this.)
"Yes, it's that obvious. Well, actually, it's more obvious that you've started a friendship with the boy. Anything more would take a while to maniifest in public. Oh, well, it's not like everyone knows that's it gone that far... I mean, you haven't been court martialled yet, right?"
"As always, ever the optimist."
I was writing fic!Genesis before he was a gleam in Nomura's eye. Seriously, though, I didn't notice the typo until I wrote it out, right now. This was from 2000/2001, folks.
Why did I even come back here in the first place? I could have just waited it out by the door. This is stupid. Why do I feel like I have to stay here and wait? Is there some little drama happening in the officers' baths that I can't be privy to? Mostly everyone is asleep. I'm going back...
Just about a fraction of a second after I close my office door, another door echoes the sound. Who could it be...? Probably Sephiroth...
This is an example of my "cleverness." It's sort of a running gag in this fic that the OC doesn't get to be in many of the interesting bits of the main 'verse story. (Which could've been done really well, but I still don't have the chops for it.) Most of the Really Bad parts tend to be plot points from the other author's 'verse. (You know, where I was really trying to be clever.) I think it's better for everyone involved if I don't post any of those.
The big thing I noticed is just how much I wanted to be clever, or be seen as clever. This writing was for another author's 'verse, and I knew she was a better writer than I was, so I needed to stuff my writing with in-jokes and canon shout-outs and Clever Over Thinking. (PROTIP: If your Clever Over Thinking needs the character to have a one or two paragraph aside in order to talk about said cleverness, then it's probably not that clever. Or necessary.) I still have fits of wanting to make readers go "I see what you did there," but I think I've got it under control. A bit. (Then I do something like "Hacking the Gibson" where people had to look at my cleverness and then... yeah.) Another bad habit I still have is not finishing anything. From my epic Mary Sue to Mercverse arcs and Fanfic 100, all of my fics are works in progress.
I thought about posting up bits for everyone to see, but I feel icky about it. It isn't about the rambly turns of phrase or the fact that the perspecitve (original) character sounds like me in high school (PROTIP: If a guy in his twenties sounds like a bitter teenage high school girl, someone's doing something wrong.), it's more about the fact that the author's still known for this 'verse, and said author and I are on terms of denial. You know, where the parties go along like the other did not exist.
Obviously, I'm not keeping up my part of the bargain. I don't think I can, really. The whole experience, as cliché as it sounds, made me what I am today.
Know what? Fuckit. Old shame time. Of course I'm going to cherry pick for the bits that I'm not too embarassed to post. That's how I roll.
Trying not to cause insane amounts of bodily harm to myself was pretty much the main reason I've never been able to fight with a nodachi. I know the forms, but getting me to use Masamune is like asking me to kill myself.
Soldier OC. Yeah, I was clever, all right.
Those little clumps of grass and weeds that would be a farmer's blight in Gongaga or Wutai are incredible survivors in this city. The skill--or blessing--of survival is vital in order to see the light of another day around here. They breathe the same noxious fumes we do, get whatever sun manages to break through the smog, and the only water they recive is the putrid rain that falls every so often.
Yet, despite the poisons, they live... and look a hell of a lot better than those horrible artifical plants scattered about the base."
I think I was reading/still under the thrall of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I wrote this bit. (Not that it counts, since I love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but this must've been around the first time I read it that I wrote this.)
"Yes, it's that obvious. Well, actually, it's more obvious that you've started a friendship with the boy. Anything more would take a while to maniifest in public. Oh, well, it's not like everyone knows that's it gone that far... I mean, you haven't been court martialled yet, right?"
"As always, ever the optimist."
I was writing fic!Genesis before he was a gleam in Nomura's eye. Seriously, though, I didn't notice the typo until I wrote it out, right now. This was from 2000/2001, folks.
Why did I even come back here in the first place? I could have just waited it out by the door. This is stupid. Why do I feel like I have to stay here and wait? Is there some little drama happening in the officers' baths that I can't be privy to? Mostly everyone is asleep. I'm going back...
Just about a fraction of a second after I close my office door, another door echoes the sound. Who could it be...? Probably Sephiroth...
This is an example of my "cleverness." It's sort of a running gag in this fic that the OC doesn't get to be in many of the interesting bits of the main 'verse story. (Which could've been done really well, but I still don't have the chops for it.) Most of the Really Bad parts tend to be plot points from the other author's 'verse. (You know, where I was really trying to be clever.) I think it's better for everyone involved if I don't post any of those.