Comments | octavius_x: You, Ozymandias

octavius_x

You, Ozymandias

Nov 25, 2010 14:40

This is an "I'm thankful for" post; BE WARNED!

About a week ago I had a bit of an ego bust when someone 3-4 years younger than me wrote something so complex I had to read it about 16 times. bellicosus, in her usual wisdom, told me to stow it and just be thankful someone that good existed in fandom. Wounded as I was at the time I did not really think about ( Read more... )

!!!, ilubellicosus

Comments 11

ronsard November 26 2010, 02:53:53 UTC

About a week ago I had a bit of an ego bust when someone 3-4 years younger than me wrote something so complex I had to read it about 16 times

Don't go down that road. Nothing good can come of it, you have to be kind to yourself and know your limits. My limit, for example, is never reading too much of my flist all at once. BELIEVE IN ME WHO BELIEVES IN YOU ♥♥♥

Are writing classes fun? I've never taken any English classes beyond the required Freshman course that only really taught me how to use the MLA system, which then became pointless once I bought the Penguin Handbook. I keep hearing people say these scary things about workshopping and peer reviews

octavius_x November 26 2010, 04:34:14 UTC

Like I said Bellicosus was not having any of my self-pitying business (it was the_lady_lamb btw) and I enjoy her perspective; sometimes the artist brusqueness is good. Yes, I agree it is a dark road and even if I can't replicate the whole complexity of that piece maybe in time I'll be able to do part of it. HUMILITY FANDOM, YOU TEACH IT TO ME ( ... )

imochan November 26 2010, 04:34:26 UTC

♥

octavius_x November 26 2010, 04:46:13 UTC

rondaview November 26 2010, 09:03:22 UTC

Oh my god, peripheralsight has been my secret fanfiction hero since I was 15 years old. Her Escaflowne/FFX/Shaman King/origfic/EVERY STORY SHE HAS EVER WRITTEN = me trying to hold on to the top of my head, a slightly stunned look on my face.

also, lol, plz, I do not belong on that list and you know it. /demands to be removed forthwith

(hi!)

octavius_x November 26 2010, 20:11:03 UTC

NEVER! hahaha oh man her supernatural story sold Wincest to me. She is so awesome. All the people up there are awesome.

(OH NOW YOU ARE SAYING HI LEGAL SCHOLAR. jk ilu, say hi more often!)

rondaview November 27 2010, 10:28:52 UTC

Far from being a respectable legal scholar, I am languishing at home like the unemployed dissolute I am (and always was at heart). ALSO WHUT, you are impugning my good character with your joking accusations >:[ I do email you asking you to update me with momentous life decisions and stylin' photos of your fashion-setting tendencies okay! And have yet to receive an answer. In general I think our correspondences are slowed by the laggy response times (e.g. you post a link on my fb wall, I respond in kind after 2 weeks, you reply with a "<3" in five days, rinse and repeat).

venusian_eye November 26 2010, 20:07:44 UTC

Perhaps it's an oversimplification to say that I feel the same way, but. I love and am thankful for fandom for much the same reasons. Fanfic is... alive, to me. Communal, in a sense, but also very private. And fun. And, like you said, I absolutely feel that it's allowed me to walk in the shadows of giants; I got very choked up while reading this, so thank you for writing it. &hearts

(My brain, at the moment, resembles sludge, so it's a bad time to attempt to say anything meaningful or even superficial because my feet have a magnetic attraction to my mouth, but such concerns rarely stop me.)

octavius_x December 4 2010, 07:38:37 UTC

Yes, alive. Eventually I had to sort of explain why I was online all the time to my then boyfriend and what it was I was doing, and after explaining the gist of slash I felt like I had to explain that it's not comparable to men and lesbian porn, not at all. If that's all it was we would all just be on aarinfantasy, obviously something attracts us to lj whether it is community or writing as a medium etc. I'm reminded of the difference in porno for men and for women where--for the most part--women want an accompanying story. Sex must occur within an emotional landscape whether it's hate, love, jealousy otherwise it's hard for us to understand the attraction or sympathize. Again there's also the communal interest aspect of it, lucky for us I guess the circles we run in hinge on bettering ourselves and writing and creating beautiful things. There are def. pieces online that have more literary value than the majority of what I read and see off it. I'm a firm believer that most of the new generation of writers is being fostered on the ( ... )

nthcoincident November 28 2010, 22:28:06 UTC

JFC I should've just listened to you last year when you told me writing class was a bust. This shit makes me miserable on a daily basis. I keep thinking "please, bitch, you can't do that like can" or "you haven't read a good deconstruction of realism until you've read " and GODDAMNIT, IS IT REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK THAT A STORY HAVE RESOLUTION ONCE IN A WHILE

Not even talking about the rampant genre snobbery, prickly "writers' statements" (it's writing, if you need an entire separate statement doesn't that say you're doing it wrong...) and utter sameness of all the pieces we're presented with as exemplars of the department. /cliff

Fandom not only got me writing again after a two-year inability to produce work, it enabled me to befriend and read writing from people I consider "real" writers more than any of the people I've met in writing class. And you are absolutely one of those people, so rest assured that it's mutual &hearts I'm confident that our MADA/HASHI PROJECT OF EPIC AND AWESOME (<--official title) will teach me more about ( ... )

octavius_x December 4 2010, 07:25:53 UTC

LOLLL Well I still think it's a good experience to have, esp for fandom writers because you have exposure to different writing styles and ways of critique or, you know, critique at all. There's definitely some residual distaste on my part for the thing as a whole, but I did end up meeting lots of wonderful people as part of it. Even people I argued with I got along with (in the grad class) outside of that. In retrospect I guess I hate the idea of being "told" what to do, or of people who sacrifice their works at the altars of their "masters" instead of trying to deconstruct, emulate and improve upon. Actually the worst comment I've ever received was from someone who took apart some of my sentences and diction and told me how I "should" have done it according to convention. How the word "marless" was not in the dictionary and should therefore not be used; if she'd straight up told me the whole thing didn't work for her that would have been about 500 times more useful and the thing was it wasn't a suggestion of what might work better ( ... )