[fic post] If You Never Fight, You'll Never Win

[oceansex]

So yeah. Been missing in action since Monday. Somehow I caught strep throat, so I didn't want to eat/drink anything 'cause my throat hurt so bad, I couldn't sleep for two days, and I nearly collapsed each time I tried to get out of bed. Turns out I was severely dehydrated, which means I now have to carry water with me everywhere. If my friend hadn'

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[hooves]

Hehe, well, let me tell you about my fandom. Said fandom is Rose of Versailles, a 1979 anime (early 70s manga) that never was dubbed (or translated officially) into English. So we have this tiny gaggle of fans from all over the world. I'm one of like, three or four English writers, and the fandom is probably mostly my own silly 'fics. Well, my most faithful reviewers, dear Loulou and Kasia, are from Syria and Poland respectively. Kasia's English isn't too bad, but Loulou's is broken. Badly. It's so cute. Both of them leave the best reviews I've ever gotten. They read each other's reviews. Everyone in the fandom...reads their reviews. They always bring up interesting ideas for new stories, new interpretations of (my, others) writing that nobody ever thought of before, et cetera. Isn't that insane? That people who struggle speaking and writing the English language give more insight and helpful advice without even realizing they're doing it, than pretty much everyone in every fandom I've ever been in. (Shutting up about that now.)

Uh-oh, it's not a secret anymore! I never did any of that in school, so all critique I have ever gotten has been...online. I don't know how horrible that is, or if it's horrible at all. Until eh, less than two years ago, I was using commas and semi-colons completely inappropriately. A nice reviewer who majored in English set me straight.

And you're right. That would be so awesome to get a group of friendly people together who can critique without offending, who don't mind giving insight and plot ideas and...such. That would be a utopia for most writers, wouldn't you agree? I'm sure you do, hehe.

Yes, absolutely, fanfiction is the shortcut to the real writing world. Along with the blast-it-fast NaNoWriMo, you can't go wrong. (Some people don't like NaNo, but damn if I didn't have a blast writing 88,000 words of FIC.)

In short, though, we can all improve, but sometimes it's hard to spot errors yourself-- whether they are grammatical or plot or otherwise-centric. =D ♥

[treeflamingo]

I've discovered that sometimes people get more interesting things out of writing in a language other than their own because it takes more work for them to understand it. Nothing (or close to nothing) passes immediately from the page into understanding; everything has to go through all sorts of symbol-recognition and translation and process-of-elimination departments. You have to think about writing in another language in so much more detail, and you are so frequently unsure about what precisely was meant, what exactly these words mean to the native author, that you end up finding lots of totally out-of-the-way and terribly interesting ways to think about what native speakers find straightforward. It's the same reason that learners will make a "mistake" in their speech and end up saying something much more nuanced than they know. I find it fascinating, personally.

Also, you must realize that you have just challenged me to find and check out your little fandom. *googles Rose of Versailles* ...oh my gosh this looks ridiculous how do I get my hands on it Isohunt has nothing uuuuusefulllllll

So... so, you'll join me, then? In my quest to build a community of friendly, involved, concrit giving writers? *puppy dog eyes*

[hooves]

Replying to this really quick before I have to start my car and get dressed and leave for work. There's something about getting up at 4:00am to do this that...should be illegal. In my opinion. =P

I agree completely about writing in another language. I think we could learn something from that! Well, "we" being a general, "we the people". And by "that", I mean becoming more precise with our writing. Even though I'm one of those "vague" writers sometimes, other times I'll admit I've confused people by not being precise enough. (Though sometimes I just want people to think.)

Eh, my little fandom. ♥ I needs love because it never gets enough. And and and uhh... CrunchyRoll used to have it, but....ugh. The manga's in several languages (none of them English, and I personally own and love the French version, but there is one in Spanish).

Ah, I'll ask some people where you might be able to find the anime to watch. ♥ I'm burning the series to DVD for a friend. (You can download it online, but the series is about 5 gigs. It took me forever to download it (slow internet at the time), but if you want me to find it for you, I could do that. Just let me know. =]

And...and yes! [Sticks flag into the ground at the top of a hill and lets the wind blow her hair around!] I WILL JOIN YOUR QUEST! W-wait, do those puppy eyes look like Tamaki's? o_O

=DDD Also, do you mind if I friend-add you since you're so interesting and awesome?

[treeflamingo]

Yays! Friend away! *bounces* I love getting new friends.

So there's an official translation of the manga into Spanish? I'll have to see if I can get my hands on it. I'll probably stick with the manga to start with, simply because I haven't had the time to actually watch anime lately. Oh hey, have you seen Revolutionary Girl Utena? RoV seems like it's got some themes in common with Utena. ::shrug:: Associative conversation FTW.

No, my puppy dog eyes do not look like Tamaki's. Puppy dog eyes, in my belief, should be large and mournful and shiny. It makes me wonder what kind of puppies they have in Japan, that their puppy dog eyes are so small. *scratches head*

There's something to be said, I think, for both precision and vague-ness in writing. My personal favorite style is to use extremely precise language to describe (in the paint-brush sense, in the sense that a kite string can describe an arc across the sky) a vague-ish scene heavy with implication and light on certainty. But I have read writers who do a truly marvelous job with using subtlety and vagueness and nuance and nebulousness in every aspect of their writing, and I have read writers who leave almost nothing to the imagination and still captivate their readers. ::shrug:: It's the great appeal of art, I think, that so many different methods can be used by so many different hands to accomplish the same general purpose.

[hooves]

Will do!

Utena was inspired by RoV!

Yeah, I wondered at his puppy-dog eyes, too. But they were cute in their own way (ie: a very disturbing way) so I tried not to think about it.

[Heavy with implication and light on certainty]

That...that is an awesome way to describe that. And yes, writing is definitely an art, so that makes us (writers) artists; therefore, we have our own style, and no style is right or wrong. (Supposedly; that is the theory.)

♥ Also, what do you go by? Everyone just calls me Manna. =]

[treeflamingo]

Hah! There you go then. I win at discovering obvious lineages between fandoms?

Yep, that's my theory. The only way art can be "wrong" is if it touches nobody at all. Or if it's seriously ugly. :[

On the internets, I generally just go by treeflamingo. I've got the same handle basically everywhere. ::shrug:: It simplifies things.