Tumblr shiny, TW, old stories, fanmail, and family
"Nature, like a woman, will seduce you with its sights and its scents and its touch, and then it breaks your ankle, also like a woman."
-- pretty much my thoughts on Tumblr. :D Easy to fall into with its pretty pictures and snarky gifs. The only thing though, and I don't mean to be melodramatic, but it makes me feel old. No, really. Everywhere I look, the moment I find some interesting pretty (I'm so easily seduced by the pretty) blog, I see this: 'I'm 15 (16, 17, 20 at most!), an artist, from Venezuela, Brazil, Italy, Boston.' Literally everywhere I look. It makes me feel ancient and also as though I'm perving in a sandbox, like an actual sandbox, with toddlers and all. I don't actually feel old at my very mature age of 31, but being surrounded by all these bright-eyed teens is sort of trying to persistently convince me that I am. Too old for this or too old to live, I'm not sure which. It's a bizarre experience. :D
Also I feel like I'm missing a gene or something. I felt like this before occasionally and recently it's been reinforced by the Teen Wolf explosion. The thing is, I don't get TW. Not in the sense that I don't understand it, but rather in the same way I didn't get chickenpox as a child. Now I'm living in constant fear of somehow acquiring it as an adult, which I heard is very nasty. Seriously, I'd much rather have had it as a child, if I had a choice. Same with TW. I watched it a while back when the mass hysteria was a little less mass, and it didn't give me a lot of feels. Seeing as everyone around me, like the major part of my flist that doesn't (surprisingly) consist solely of teenagers has gone completely mad about it, I'm drawing the conclusion that I'm genetically odd and leaving it at that. (Also I might have unfollowed some people for the single reason that I couldn't handle that much of it on my dash, but that was before I learned of Tumblr Savior, so I'll be remeding this shortly.) I'm very happy for you guys that this show is making you squeal and flail, you all sound real happy. I'm kind of sorry I'm not there with you. ;)
Moving on. I got a PM last night from someone on FFN. Most of the time these days I don't remember I still have a presence there, so it was a bit like a backdated deja vu, if that makes any sense. The message, however, was hilarious. I don't mean it in a bad way and I realise that it wasn't intended as such, but it amused me a lot, so there. It was about WFAF, and it started with something along the lines of 'I couldn't get very far in this story because I disagree with your characterization of Spock as a helpless victim...' After which, the sender went into some details about things she thought were implausible, wrong, etc. After which -- it was a rather lengthy message -- she repeated that she didn't get/agree with that and that and that and if I could get back to her, despite that, because she couldn't continue reading the story that was so bad, but she was curious about my reasoning and how I dealt with certain things.
Bullet points:
Now, we all know (hopefully) that I consider WFAF a piece of bad, self-indulgent writing from the early days of fandom, when I was still mad about the whole TOS/Reboot thing and was gleefully writing caricatures of characters because my love for TOS made me see them as such. I'm not going to repeat myself. Those of you who have been here since those days know exactly how I feel on the subject because I've been vocal about it too many times. I'm also aware that there are people who genuinely liked that one and other early fics, and get mad at me whenever I call them bad. I can only say to this that there is a 'self' in self-indulgent, so it's not like I didn't enjoy them. It just doesn't prevent me from seeing them for what they are. I'm not ashamed of them, not embarrassed by them, they are what they are. Because of reasons. *g* I could theoretically get back to this person and explain this to her, but I really don't feel like it. Wonder why. :D
This, however, reminds me that perhaps it's time. I hate to do this, because I hate when other authors are doing it, but yes, it's time to take some stories down. I'll be making a separate post (sorry for the spam today) later, but in one month's time WFAF, Personal Diplomacy, and the Healing Touch will be taken down. I'm thinking they'll be available on request if someone wants them that badly, but mostly, yep, it's time. I'm not doing this because of bad fanmail, I'm doing this because I genuinely don't think these stories add anything to fandom culture and because I don't want to be explaining to people any longer that I'm not that person anymore. God knows, I've talked your ear off enough on the subject.
In family news, my dad in his infinite wisdom now wants me to run errands for the Other Woman. I'm still sort of speechless, because I can't figure out how or why or when did I give any sort of indication that I'd be all right with this. Every time I'm beginning to think that I've lost all capacity to be baffled by his actions, he pulls a stunt like this. I'm hoping really hard that some day it will be funny. For now, it's kind of like living at the bottom of the emotion well. You keep trying to climb up and keep falling back under a new torrent. It's in fact pretty fascinating. Yeah.
Wow, I really haven't made a post in a long time, have I? :D
-- pretty much my thoughts on Tumblr. :D Easy to fall into with its pretty pictures and snarky gifs. The only thing though, and I don't mean to be melodramatic, but it makes me feel old. No, really. Everywhere I look, the moment I find some interesting pretty (I'm so easily seduced by the pretty) blog, I see this: 'I'm 15 (16, 17, 20 at most!), an artist, from Venezuela, Brazil, Italy, Boston.' Literally everywhere I look. It makes me feel ancient and also as though I'm perving in a sandbox, like an actual sandbox, with toddlers and all. I don't actually feel old at my very mature age of 31, but being surrounded by all these bright-eyed teens is sort of trying to persistently convince me that I am. Too old for this or too old to live, I'm not sure which. It's a bizarre experience. :D
Also I feel like I'm missing a gene or something. I felt like this before occasionally and recently it's been reinforced by the Teen Wolf explosion. The thing is, I don't get TW. Not in the sense that I don't understand it, but rather in the same way I didn't get chickenpox as a child. Now I'm living in constant fear of somehow acquiring it as an adult, which I heard is very nasty. Seriously, I'd much rather have had it as a child, if I had a choice. Same with TW. I watched it a while back when the mass hysteria was a little less mass, and it didn't give me a lot of feels. Seeing as everyone around me, like the major part of my flist that doesn't (surprisingly) consist solely of teenagers has gone completely mad about it, I'm drawing the conclusion that I'm genetically odd and leaving it at that. (Also I might have unfollowed some people for the single reason that I couldn't handle that much of it on my dash, but that was before I learned of Tumblr Savior, so I'll be remeding this shortly.) I'm very happy for you guys that this show is making you squeal and flail, you all sound real happy. I'm kind of sorry I'm not there with you. ;)
Moving on. I got a PM last night from someone on FFN. Most of the time these days I don't remember I still have a presence there, so it was a bit like a backdated deja vu, if that makes any sense. The message, however, was hilarious. I don't mean it in a bad way and I realise that it wasn't intended as such, but it amused me a lot, so there. It was about WFAF, and it started with something along the lines of 'I couldn't get very far in this story because I disagree with your characterization of Spock as a helpless victim...' After which, the sender went into some details about things she thought were implausible, wrong, etc. After which -- it was a rather lengthy message -- she repeated that she didn't get/agree with that and that and that and if I could get back to her, despite that, because she couldn't continue reading the story that was so bad, but she was curious about my reasoning and how I dealt with certain things.
Bullet points:
- the story is bad
- she explains it in some detail
- she wants me to 'get back to her' to explain myself.
Now, we all know (hopefully) that I consider WFAF a piece of bad, self-indulgent writing from the early days of fandom, when I was still mad about the whole TOS/Reboot thing and was gleefully writing caricatures of characters because my love for TOS made me see them as such. I'm not going to repeat myself. Those of you who have been here since those days know exactly how I feel on the subject because I've been vocal about it too many times. I'm also aware that there are people who genuinely liked that one and other early fics, and get mad at me whenever I call them bad. I can only say to this that there is a 'self' in self-indulgent, so it's not like I didn't enjoy them. It just doesn't prevent me from seeing them for what they are. I'm not ashamed of them, not embarrassed by them, they are what they are. Because of reasons. *g* I could theoretically get back to this person and explain this to her, but I really don't feel like it. Wonder why. :D
This, however, reminds me that perhaps it's time. I hate to do this, because I hate when other authors are doing it, but yes, it's time to take some stories down. I'll be making a separate post (sorry for the spam today) later, but in one month's time WFAF, Personal Diplomacy, and the Healing Touch will be taken down. I'm thinking they'll be available on request if someone wants them that badly, but mostly, yep, it's time. I'm not doing this because of bad fanmail, I'm doing this because I genuinely don't think these stories add anything to fandom culture and because I don't want to be explaining to people any longer that I'm not that person anymore. God knows, I've talked your ear off enough on the subject.
In family news, my dad in his infinite wisdom now wants me to run errands for the Other Woman. I'm still sort of speechless, because I can't figure out how or why or when did I give any sort of indication that I'd be all right with this. Every time I'm beginning to think that I've lost all capacity to be baffled by his actions, he pulls a stunt like this. I'm hoping really hard that some day it will be funny. For now, it's kind of like living at the bottom of the emotion well. You keep trying to climb up and keep falling back under a new torrent. It's in fact pretty fascinating. Yeah.
Wow, I really haven't made a post in a long time, have I? :D