My entry for this year's Most Self-Indulgent LJ-Post competition
I openly, and even with some pride, admit that one of my purposes in life is making people uncomfortable and/or sad by writing fic that's heavy on the angst, and occasionally outright disturbing. So, after having a bit of a conversation today about that, I decided to have a look at my collected feedback (yes, folks, you read that right. I collect my feedback. It helps when the writing neurosis rears its head; nurturing an inflated sense of my own talent is one of the things that *sort of* helps against the neurosis, at least for a while, until someone or something takes me down a few pegs again.)
So here's an overview of feedback telling me how I succeeded at this purpose of mine (anonymised, naturally, and heavily abridged):
Sometimes We Believe:
I quite enjoyed it. Okay..."enjoyed" is probably the wrong word for a story where the protagonist dies at the end, but it was a very good story.
Together:
actually makes me cry.
Wah :(. Angst. So good. No words.
It was a hard read (...) I had to pause and leave the room to calm myself down.
At the end I was smiling and trying to hold back tears.
Normal:
And I so wanted them to have that conversation and here you wrote it in its raw pain and beauty.
That... was the good ache.
elegantly spare and cuts to the bone
Why is it so many fanfic writers want to make me cry?
What a depressing story.
Paint it black, like Mick said. And I love black.
You've given us a look into the heart of darkness that John carries within him now
makes you ache sharply
I will admit that I was crying by the end.
Endure:
Well, that's a very dark look at what the end of the game could be.
I am putting it on my favorites, as it both frightens and thrills me to read
No slash, and not a "nice" story - rather a disturbing one *g* (...)
It's dark, bleak and seriously atmospheric, set in a dystopic future and everything from the formatting to the language works to put the reader squarely inside the world of the story.
That was...chilling.
This is, hands down, one of the most creatively structured fics I've read, as well as one of the darkest.
(...) extraordinary, frightening, one hell of a piece of writing.
Starving on the Jump Down:
Very bitter.
(...) so simple and so wrenching.
It reads angry.
(...) very hard-hitting, quite a bit of strong emotion wrapped up into a small space. Disturbingly beautiful.
gut-wrenchingly evocative
dark and soul-destroying
(You may imagine my tongue lodged firmly in my cheek when I wrote the first sentence of this entry.)
So here's an overview of feedback telling me how I succeeded at this purpose of mine (anonymised, naturally, and heavily abridged):
Sometimes We Believe:
I quite enjoyed it. Okay..."enjoyed" is probably the wrong word for a story where the protagonist dies at the end, but it was a very good story.
Together:
actually makes me cry.
Wah :(. Angst. So good. No words.
It was a hard read (...) I had to pause and leave the room to calm myself down.
At the end I was smiling and trying to hold back tears.
Normal:
And I so wanted them to have that conversation and here you wrote it in its raw pain and beauty.
That... was the good ache.
elegantly spare and cuts to the bone
Why is it so many fanfic writers want to make me cry?
What a depressing story.
Paint it black, like Mick said. And I love black.
You've given us a look into the heart of darkness that John carries within him now
makes you ache sharply
I will admit that I was crying by the end.
Endure:
Well, that's a very dark look at what the end of the game could be.
I am putting it on my favorites, as it both frightens and thrills me to read
No slash, and not a "nice" story - rather a disturbing one *g* (...)
It's dark, bleak and seriously atmospheric, set in a dystopic future and everything from the formatting to the language works to put the reader squarely inside the world of the story.
That was...chilling.
This is, hands down, one of the most creatively structured fics I've read, as well as one of the darkest.
(...) extraordinary, frightening, one hell of a piece of writing.
Starving on the Jump Down:
Very bitter.
(...) so simple and so wrenching.
It reads angry.
(...) very hard-hitting, quite a bit of strong emotion wrapped up into a small space. Disturbingly beautiful.
gut-wrenchingly evocative
dark and soul-destroying
(You may imagine my tongue lodged firmly in my cheek when I wrote the first sentence of this entry.)