xmassy, er, goodness
I am SOOOOOOOOO glad finals are over. (And Brokeback Mountain opens tomorrow here in Chicago!!!) If it had been any other classes, I'd have had all As... But the nursing department has the grades scaled such that 92-100 is an A, and 85-91 is a B. So I'm the high Bs with two classes and As in the other two. Bummer, dude. I miss the ol' 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, etc. grading scale for all the other classes I ever took that didn't matter as much as these (because, mainly, it's really important that you get this shit right, so as Not To Kill The Patient...) But not missing it enough to lobby for it... I'll take my lumps and get on with it.
Bad news: our pharmacology teacher for next semester informed us that it would be "a good idea" to read up on fluid and electrolyte balances over break, and also to at least start (preferably finish) a 12 page paper on the cancer of your choice, including etiology, treatment, expected outcomes, new developments/drugs/R&D.
But I was going to spend my break WRITING FANFIC!!! (and catching up on all the pleasure reading I haven't had time to do!) I highly resent the intrusion of nursing school into my BREAK TIME. Sure, it's only the profession I'm planning to go into (wow, 38 years old and I FINALLY picked a "profession" instead of slackerly sliding into jobs I'm more than competent to do, but don't enjoy all that much after the initial flush of newness recedes). And it only is requiring all my spare time and my first born child -- no, just kidding. Nursing school instructors clearly do not appreciate that my mind needs frequent vacation into the world of slashthought. But I bought the fluid and electrolyte "optional" text for next semester anyway. I will probably read it over the break.
I can't WAIT for Brokeback Mountain to open in Chicago tomorrow. I think I already said it, but it bears repeating.
So, well, as usual, I expected too much of myself and my free time. (This would explain all the years-old WIPs I never finished, despite going on to write other stories in the same fandoms...) I'll have to scale 'em back. I should just get into the habit of recognizing that I will disappoint myself in my lack of perseverance, my procrastination, the intrusion of RL requirements, etc.
Ok, maybe I'll just finish the RayK/Fraser story I already had going, and start (there'll be no way to finish) the Nick/LaCroix/Natalie story I had planned. Oh, and the For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down/Hard Core Logo story.
Because I am offline mostly, and because I'm hopelessly behind on all-things-'net and catching up seems pointless to attempt now, I only just read about a major (now, apparently, forgotten) kerfluffle regarding some fanfic writer who asked people to send her money to fund her fanfic writing. Which I thought was crass, but, hey, the world is really crass these days; I mean, reality TV consists of publicized crassness and the apparently bottomless pit of audience for said crassness.
Then I read a calm, reasonable reply to the slamming that said it seems hypocritical to slam this woman for asking for money when fanzine publishers and song-vidders make money off their zines and vids and that's basically the same thing.
And I'm extremely ambivalent about this myself. I read Esperanza's reply. I thought it was very intelligent and very much about community.
On the other hand, I think the many intelligent responses about this wankerbitch's attempt to get people to pay her way through her WIPs have neglected to mention one thing I think is key, at least for myself.
I don't feel a part of the community. (Don't get all upset with me; please just keep reading before you get all upset; don't take it personally and don't take this as some insult to the online community because it SO is not that!)
This is no one's fault. It just isn't possible to be online as much as is necessary (journalling, writing, participating in discussion lists, chatting online) to be a noticeable, highly visible presence anywhere once you have developed recurrent repetitive strain injuries that require you to ration your online time, take breaks, and in general baby your wrists or else lose the ability to do that which you love, i.e. use your computer to write slashfic. I wish it all were possible, but it no longer is. And I thought, back in 2003, that after I beat back (I still thought it was possible, then) the whole no-it's-not-carpal-tunnel-syndrome-it's-something-worse-for-which-there-is-no-surgery problem, I would go right back to what I had been doing, which was spending a lot of time online between about 1997 and 2001 (in addition to the 8+ hours a day I spent on computers for my job since about 1990), and all that entailed: i.e. being part of a community.
And, by 2005, it became obvious that I can't ever go back to that. It's not possible. And it was like being forced to move and then revisiting your old neighborhood. You still think you can go back, that you can visit your friends, that things will still be recognizable, that all the local hangouts will be the same, and all your paths that you followed thoughtlessly to your favorite haunts are still there, that people will remember you, that you'll remember them. But time passes and the river flows and you step back in and it's the same river but very, very different. (Even more so on the 'net, which has a transience and speed that are unique and someone's probably writing a dissertation on just those aspects right now...)
And when you feel the permanent damage act up in your arms, you know you really can't go back to it. Not the way you once did. And that's just... that. A fact. Not a choice, not an option. A fact. It can never be like it was for me. My wrists and hands and forearms are permanently damaged. And I'm not asking for any sympathy or anything; it just is what it is and must be dealt with. And, one must also move on, or be forever trapped in regrets and what-ifs and wondering-how-it-could-have-been-prevented (oh, there are legions of ways), which still does not change the present fact that You. Just. Can't. And It's. Fucking. Heartbreaking. but you try not to think of it most-times, and mostly succeed. You're relegated to RL now and you just accept it.
Because there is one thing physical problems can't take away from you in RL: your mental escapes that you've created.
So now I'm negotiating a sort of back-to-basics attempt to keep that part of myself alive and active, but without it taking the physical toll on me it once did.
Which is where I diverge from the whole "because fandom a community" thing, not because I don't want to be part of a community (I do), and not because it isn't a community (it is, however sprawling it is now), and not because there isn't value in that (there is) -- but because that wasn't what initially got me started with fanfic.
What got me started was me. My warped little mind, hell bent on homoeroticism, viewing the world through slashthought-tinted lenses.
It's true, having that little happy glow from an appreciative comment after you've posted online is nice. It's nicer than nice -- it's (not to sound too corny) special. And always leaves me feeling oddly humble and grateful that people actually think the trip through my brain that my stories provides is a worthwhile trip that they enjoyed. And feeling that no one is reading your stuff is, well, lonely and isolated -- at least, once you've gotten used to the instant-publish and near-instant feedback world of online slashfic publishing.
BUT...
I write fanfic for ME. I write fanfic that I AM GOING TO LIKE. I write fanfic I WANT TO SEE ON THE NET. It isn't that there aren't a lot of wonderful slashfic authors out there -- there ARE (praise the lord!!). It isn't that I haven't read many authors' stories and gone, "Whew!! That's a story after my own heart!" -- because I have. It isn't that I haven't ALSO read many authors' stories and gone, "Wow. I never would have pictured this myself, but what a fanfuckingtastically written story; I must send the person a LOC and praise this story." Because I have done that, too.
But, the bottom line is... what got me into reading fanfic is... what got me into writing fanfic is... I had ideas, I had images, I had scenarios, vignettes -- oh, hell, let's just call it what it is: I had fantasies of my favorite characters and partnerships (most of my likes are m/m, though there was Spuffy and, before that, Sculder). And no one else was writing my fantasies and vignettes and scenarios the way I saw them in my head... so I had to write them, to make them real (or as real as they will ever get).
Did I find that there were others out there who enjoyed the trip through my brain via reading my stories? Yep. But even if those people had never read my stories, even if no one had ever read my stories, I still would have copies of my own stories printed on 3 hole punch paper and in a 3 ring binder notebook. Because I seriously like my inner slashworld, and I like to revisit. Do I cringe over old writing, and recognize the amateurishness for what it really is? Yes. Absolutely. Cringing now, thinking about some of it. But what I have done that is good, I still enjoy; and what I have done that isn't so good still has glimmers of value in it, to the point where sometimes I plagiarize myself and cannibalize my own stuff, or unfinished, unpublished stuff I know will never go anywhere because it was just a drabble with no end, or whatever.
So, first and foremost for me, if not for other slashfic authors, is the enjoyment I derive from conceiving the stories, ruminating on them, envisioning the way it will all go down, writing all of this, and then watching sometimes when the plot or characters decide to take me on a ride of their own, as if all I'm doing is autopiloting and they have their own ideas of where it should go (whether I like it or not). I've started stories and when I finally finished them, said to myself, "Shit, I never expected to GO THERE with this -- how'd that happen?!" and I've started stories and read the finished product and said, "Damn, I don't like this story -- it's twisted and dark and I didn't want to go there". But even in the struggling, even in the bitter moments of writing that which comes grudgingly or exacts a price in brooding after it's written (as in, "Am I that twisted? That I came up with that? What is wrong with me?"), there was still enjoyment. There was an engrossing quality of obsessiveness that was, in whatever bizarre, potentially unhinged way, fairly thrilling.
And the other problem is, of course, that the writing is not ALL like that -- some of it is just drudgery, some of it is "get them from point A to point P" exposition, a chore I have to complete before I can get back to the gleaming hotness of my fantasies of these characters. This is the "eat your vegetables" part of the writing, where you eat the vegetables first and suck it up just so you can finally arrive at the smooth chocolatey goodness of the dessert you were working up towards.
(How did this become a food metaphor? Well, I guess writing and baking aren't all that different... Recipes help, but veering off from the recipes with new and interesting spices can produce surprisingly yummy variations on themes -- and often catastrophes as well... so I guess the writing-as-cooking/baking analogy sort of works!)
And so it is my personal enjoyment of writing slashfic that makes me do it to the extent that I still can. And there is no monetary compensation in the world that could ever possibly equal, let alone replace, the enjoyment I myself get out of writing fanfic -- the enjoyment I have gotten out of it, and the enjoyment I will get out of it in the future.
The community is great. The community will always exist, in an everchanging flow much like a river -- step out, and step back in four years later, and it's a different river. And yet the same.
But there is no comparison to the internal joy of producing slashfic. For me, anyway.
And there was much rejoicing. By just me, myself. Yay.
Bad news: our pharmacology teacher for next semester informed us that it would be "a good idea" to read up on fluid and electrolyte balances over break, and also to at least start (preferably finish) a 12 page paper on the cancer of your choice, including etiology, treatment, expected outcomes, new developments/drugs/R&D.
But I was going to spend my break WRITING FANFIC!!! (and catching up on all the pleasure reading I haven't had time to do!) I highly resent the intrusion of nursing school into my BREAK TIME. Sure, it's only the profession I'm planning to go into (wow, 38 years old and I FINALLY picked a "profession" instead of slackerly sliding into jobs I'm more than competent to do, but don't enjoy all that much after the initial flush of newness recedes). And it only is requiring all my spare time and my first born child -- no, just kidding. Nursing school instructors clearly do not appreciate that my mind needs frequent vacation into the world of slashthought. But I bought the fluid and electrolyte "optional" text for next semester anyway. I will probably read it over the break.
I can't WAIT for Brokeback Mountain to open in Chicago tomorrow. I think I already said it, but it bears repeating.
So, well, as usual, I expected too much of myself and my free time. (This would explain all the years-old WIPs I never finished, despite going on to write other stories in the same fandoms...) I'll have to scale 'em back. I should just get into the habit of recognizing that I will disappoint myself in my lack of perseverance, my procrastination, the intrusion of RL requirements, etc.
Ok, maybe I'll just finish the RayK/Fraser story I already had going, and start (there'll be no way to finish) the Nick/LaCroix/Natalie story I had planned. Oh, and the For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down/Hard Core Logo story.
Because I am offline mostly, and because I'm hopelessly behind on all-things-'net and catching up seems pointless to attempt now, I only just read about a major (now, apparently, forgotten) kerfluffle regarding some fanfic writer who asked people to send her money to fund her fanfic writing. Which I thought was crass, but, hey, the world is really crass these days; I mean, reality TV consists of publicized crassness and the apparently bottomless pit of audience for said crassness.
Then I read a calm, reasonable reply to the slamming that said it seems hypocritical to slam this woman for asking for money when fanzine publishers and song-vidders make money off their zines and vids and that's basically the same thing.
And I'm extremely ambivalent about this myself. I read Esperanza's reply. I thought it was very intelligent and very much about community.
On the other hand, I think the many intelligent responses about this wankerbitch's attempt to get people to pay her way through her WIPs have neglected to mention one thing I think is key, at least for myself.
I don't feel a part of the community. (Don't get all upset with me; please just keep reading before you get all upset; don't take it personally and don't take this as some insult to the online community because it SO is not that!)
This is no one's fault. It just isn't possible to be online as much as is necessary (journalling, writing, participating in discussion lists, chatting online) to be a noticeable, highly visible presence anywhere once you have developed recurrent repetitive strain injuries that require you to ration your online time, take breaks, and in general baby your wrists or else lose the ability to do that which you love, i.e. use your computer to write slashfic. I wish it all were possible, but it no longer is. And I thought, back in 2003, that after I beat back (I still thought it was possible, then) the whole no-it's-not-carpal-tunnel-syndrome-it's-something-worse-for-which-there-is-no-surgery problem, I would go right back to what I had been doing, which was spending a lot of time online between about 1997 and 2001 (in addition to the 8+ hours a day I spent on computers for my job since about 1990), and all that entailed: i.e. being part of a community.
And, by 2005, it became obvious that I can't ever go back to that. It's not possible. And it was like being forced to move and then revisiting your old neighborhood. You still think you can go back, that you can visit your friends, that things will still be recognizable, that all the local hangouts will be the same, and all your paths that you followed thoughtlessly to your favorite haunts are still there, that people will remember you, that you'll remember them. But time passes and the river flows and you step back in and it's the same river but very, very different. (Even more so on the 'net, which has a transience and speed that are unique and someone's probably writing a dissertation on just those aspects right now...)
And when you feel the permanent damage act up in your arms, you know you really can't go back to it. Not the way you once did. And that's just... that. A fact. Not a choice, not an option. A fact. It can never be like it was for me. My wrists and hands and forearms are permanently damaged. And I'm not asking for any sympathy or anything; it just is what it is and must be dealt with. And, one must also move on, or be forever trapped in regrets and what-ifs and wondering-how-it-could-have-been-prevented (oh, there are legions of ways), which still does not change the present fact that You. Just. Can't. And It's. Fucking. Heartbreaking. but you try not to think of it most-times, and mostly succeed. You're relegated to RL now and you just accept it.
Because there is one thing physical problems can't take away from you in RL: your mental escapes that you've created.
So now I'm negotiating a sort of back-to-basics attempt to keep that part of myself alive and active, but without it taking the physical toll on me it once did.
Which is where I diverge from the whole "because fandom a community" thing, not because I don't want to be part of a community (I do), and not because it isn't a community (it is, however sprawling it is now), and not because there isn't value in that (there is) -- but because that wasn't what initially got me started with fanfic.
What got me started was me. My warped little mind, hell bent on homoeroticism, viewing the world through slashthought-tinted lenses.
It's true, having that little happy glow from an appreciative comment after you've posted online is nice. It's nicer than nice -- it's (not to sound too corny) special. And always leaves me feeling oddly humble and grateful that people actually think the trip through my brain that my stories provides is a worthwhile trip that they enjoyed. And feeling that no one is reading your stuff is, well, lonely and isolated -- at least, once you've gotten used to the instant-publish and near-instant feedback world of online slashfic publishing.
BUT...
I write fanfic for ME. I write fanfic that I AM GOING TO LIKE. I write fanfic I WANT TO SEE ON THE NET. It isn't that there aren't a lot of wonderful slashfic authors out there -- there ARE (praise the lord!!). It isn't that I haven't read many authors' stories and gone, "Whew!! That's a story after my own heart!" -- because I have. It isn't that I haven't ALSO read many authors' stories and gone, "Wow. I never would have pictured this myself, but what a fanfuckingtastically written story; I must send the person a LOC and praise this story." Because I have done that, too.
But, the bottom line is... what got me into reading fanfic is... what got me into writing fanfic is... I had ideas, I had images, I had scenarios, vignettes -- oh, hell, let's just call it what it is: I had fantasies of my favorite characters and partnerships (most of my likes are m/m, though there was Spuffy and, before that, Sculder). And no one else was writing my fantasies and vignettes and scenarios the way I saw them in my head... so I had to write them, to make them real (or as real as they will ever get).
Did I find that there were others out there who enjoyed the trip through my brain via reading my stories? Yep. But even if those people had never read my stories, even if no one had ever read my stories, I still would have copies of my own stories printed on 3 hole punch paper and in a 3 ring binder notebook. Because I seriously like my inner slashworld, and I like to revisit. Do I cringe over old writing, and recognize the amateurishness for what it really is? Yes. Absolutely. Cringing now, thinking about some of it. But what I have done that is good, I still enjoy; and what I have done that isn't so good still has glimmers of value in it, to the point where sometimes I plagiarize myself and cannibalize my own stuff, or unfinished, unpublished stuff I know will never go anywhere because it was just a drabble with no end, or whatever.
So, first and foremost for me, if not for other slashfic authors, is the enjoyment I derive from conceiving the stories, ruminating on them, envisioning the way it will all go down, writing all of this, and then watching sometimes when the plot or characters decide to take me on a ride of their own, as if all I'm doing is autopiloting and they have their own ideas of where it should go (whether I like it or not). I've started stories and when I finally finished them, said to myself, "Shit, I never expected to GO THERE with this -- how'd that happen?!" and I've started stories and read the finished product and said, "Damn, I don't like this story -- it's twisted and dark and I didn't want to go there". But even in the struggling, even in the bitter moments of writing that which comes grudgingly or exacts a price in brooding after it's written (as in, "Am I that twisted? That I came up with that? What is wrong with me?"), there was still enjoyment. There was an engrossing quality of obsessiveness that was, in whatever bizarre, potentially unhinged way, fairly thrilling.
And the other problem is, of course, that the writing is not ALL like that -- some of it is just drudgery, some of it is "get them from point A to point P" exposition, a chore I have to complete before I can get back to the gleaming hotness of my fantasies of these characters. This is the "eat your vegetables" part of the writing, where you eat the vegetables first and suck it up just so you can finally arrive at the smooth chocolatey goodness of the dessert you were working up towards.
(How did this become a food metaphor? Well, I guess writing and baking aren't all that different... Recipes help, but veering off from the recipes with new and interesting spices can produce surprisingly yummy variations on themes -- and often catastrophes as well... so I guess the writing-as-cooking/baking analogy sort of works!)
And so it is my personal enjoyment of writing slashfic that makes me do it to the extent that I still can. And there is no monetary compensation in the world that could ever possibly equal, let alone replace, the enjoyment I myself get out of writing fanfic -- the enjoyment I have gotten out of it, and the enjoyment I will get out of it in the future.
The community is great. The community will always exist, in an everchanging flow much like a river -- step out, and step back in four years later, and it's a different river. And yet the same.
But there is no comparison to the internal joy of producing slashfic. For me, anyway.
And there was much rejoicing. By just me, myself. Yay.