The deeply philosophical meaning of fanfiction
I'm writing this before anything else because I had the urge suddenly and it's 6:45am (a time swore to never see again) and I'll be back online later on to finish this, as I will undoubtedly have to go have a shower and go to my genetics class before this is through. I had vowed to never again take an 8 o' clock class but, well, here I am in my senior (but not final) semester and all five of my classes were only offered at one time. Including 8 o' clock.
The bright side is that I can see the sun rising earlier every day, and I can't (at least by the time I get there) look out of my kitchen window and see Venus blinking cheekily at me any more. Every winter I try to quantify the peculiar nature of the atmosphere here, and I never quite succeed, but it's sort of like walking around in a museum with plastic coverings over everything after hours. Also cold.
I often wish that I knew more writers. Both for networking purposes, as I know of only one person who is a published fiction author, but I'm not really entirely convinced of that as he's something of an ass, a womanizer, and the entire time I shared a fiction writing class with him he was constantly trying to rope me into contributing my time to his various projects, which, well, on the one hand, networking, but on the other... Dude. I have my own things to work on.
I was mildly surprised to find that a publisher had, in fact, paid to market his books, and that he hadn't stumbled his way into some crap vanity publishing deal.
In any event, I often wish that I knew more writers. I know a lot of creatively inclined scientists, some of whom actually draw or write, and Adric certainly offers up his opinions on writing quite often (although he's never made a serious effort). These people aren't the writers I need, however, because the things I want to talk about are those sorts of topics that only a habitual writer can appreciate.
For instance, the moment when you catch a glimpse into the sequel or novelization of a short story, and you get excited, but all you can say is "maybe it turns out everyone's gone stupid!" and everyone familiar with that short story (in this case, "Mask People") just sort of looks at you like "this is what you call inspiration?" and doesn't get how significant that is.
Or, how I wrote snatches of Crichton/Scorpius slash fanfiction all through summer, mostly through private journal entries on this blog done during my lunch breaks, and there was one that's a Half Life 2/Farscape crossover that I wrote not because I thought that there needed to be a crossover between those two subjects or because I desperately needed Crichton and Scorpius to make out, but that I wrote because I needed to cope with finding a mouse that had been in a glue trap all day and then drowning it.
The bright side is that I can see the sun rising earlier every day, and I can't (at least by the time I get there) look out of my kitchen window and see Venus blinking cheekily at me any more. Every winter I try to quantify the peculiar nature of the atmosphere here, and I never quite succeed, but it's sort of like walking around in a museum with plastic coverings over everything after hours. Also cold.
I often wish that I knew more writers. Both for networking purposes, as I know of only one person who is a published fiction author, but I'm not really entirely convinced of that as he's something of an ass, a womanizer, and the entire time I shared a fiction writing class with him he was constantly trying to rope me into contributing my time to his various projects, which, well, on the one hand, networking, but on the other... Dude. I have my own things to work on.
I was mildly surprised to find that a publisher had, in fact, paid to market his books, and that he hadn't stumbled his way into some crap vanity publishing deal.
In any event, I often wish that I knew more writers. I know a lot of creatively inclined scientists, some of whom actually draw or write, and Adric certainly offers up his opinions on writing quite often (although he's never made a serious effort). These people aren't the writers I need, however, because the things I want to talk about are those sorts of topics that only a habitual writer can appreciate.
For instance, the moment when you catch a glimpse into the sequel or novelization of a short story, and you get excited, but all you can say is "maybe it turns out everyone's gone stupid!" and everyone familiar with that short story (in this case, "Mask People") just sort of looks at you like "this is what you call inspiration?" and doesn't get how significant that is.
Or, how I wrote snatches of Crichton/Scorpius slash fanfiction all through summer, mostly through private journal entries on this blog done during my lunch breaks, and there was one that's a Half Life 2/Farscape crossover that I wrote not because I thought that there needed to be a crossover between those two subjects or because I desperately needed Crichton and Scorpius to make out, but that I wrote because I needed to cope with finding a mouse that had been in a glue trap all day and then drowning it.