eldarwannabe

Two nights ago I had a dream about the Chronicles of Narnia.

No kidding. I was running around and having adventures with Edmund and everything! And now I'm writing fanfiction again! Agh! I have no tiiiiiiime!

In other news, I kinda, almost met Billy Boyd. Sort of.

I was in the same room with him, OK? And yes, his accent is that awesome in real life. Details to follow if I find the time!

Title: Would Have Been Fantastic
Fandom: Star Trek (specifically the new movie)
Disclaimer: As this fandom is decently old, I really have no idea who it really belongs to. But it's certainly not me, and all the contributers to the franchise in general and the most recent Star Trek movie in particular deserve their full credit.
Character(s): Winona Kirk, and little Jimmy
Warnings:: Angst ahoy! Also, I have never written in this fandom before, and I've only seen the movie once. This is extremely unusual for me! I don't think I wrote LotR fanfic until I'd read the books twice!

( George would have been a fantastic father )

Title: Shots
Fandom: DC Comics
Characters: Roy Harper, Lian Harper
Rating: All Ages

( Will it hurt? )

Title: License
Fandom: DC Comics/Batman
Characters: Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, the staff of Wayne Industries
Rating: All Ages

( The sheer delight was infectious. )

NOTE: THIS IS UN-BETAED. I ALSO KNOW NOTHING OF CARS.
I'm off to (maybe) study now.

There's a Facebook group called "Everything I know about sex I learned from naughty fanfiction."

And part of me is tempted to join it, because it's basically TRUE.

Ah fanfiction.

The only place I can currently get my outsider fix, so I'm wandering through it. It's MUCH smaller then LotR or HP fandoms were, so I'm dealing a lot less with Mary Sunshine Purple-Eyes and her eye-color-changing superpowers of doom. But still, I've noticed something very common in a bunch of stories I'm reading and it's frustrating me to no end, so here goes:

Bad translation. And I'm not talking about language to language. I'm talking about what they think in their head to what they write on the page. Many times, it's been fairly clear that the ideas are sound, the story has enormous potential. I even tend to enjoy the begining, imagining what might come next. But over and over and over, I've watched ideas suffer from lackluster writing, inability of the writer to properly communicate their ideas. Sometimes they just rush through descriptions, have people talk oddly, clump their inspired, well-written moments next to a awful moments with bad word choice and confusing descritptions.

Not to mention the various grammatical-type issues. Or spelling. I might not spell-check everything I do (this journal post included) but when I really want someone to read something, and review it kindly, you bet I spell-check. I always re-read everything twice for any errors spell-check (or grammar-check which come with Microsoft Word) might miss. And I always put double spaces between paragraphs because ff.net specifically asks for them. But I've seen whole paragraphs clumped up together, which is ugly and distracting. I've seen people not bother to make a new paragraph every time someone new talks - you HAVE to do that!

It's not that some of these people don't care about the story, or the ideas, or the plot. They do. They just can't be bothered, or just arent' able, to get the brilliant ideas in their head to be enjoyable for others to read. Which, honestly, is the point of writing.

(I also don't enjoy it when writers get preachy at me. I'm not becoming Christian, and frankly, I'm pretty sure Ponyboy is as religious as he's going to get, and he seems pretty comfortable there. But I suppose it is your right to preach at me. You have to understand that it's also my right to stop reading your story.)

A last note: The verb referring the the action of lowering the volume on your actions or conversations is quiet. Quite is another word entirely. Thank you.

Movies I Saw Over Vacation, In the Order I Saw Them:

King Kong: Excellent, but do not bring small children. They will have nightmares of being eaten by over-sized bugs for weeks.

Chronicles of Narinia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Amazing. It did an great job of adapting the book. I would recommend it to anyone and screw Christian subtext. I would definitely consider buying this movie.

Memoirs of a Geisha: Very pretty movie. Having read the book, I noticed some wonderful details that someone who hadn't read the book would never have noticed. I was a little disappointed with some parts, didn't agree with a few of the changes, and on the whole liked the book better. But I would recommend it.

The rest of my vacation varied from good to miserable, for reasons I don't feel likes sharing right now.

But here's something I just found out. I logged into my fanfiction.net account for the first time in years (and yes, I know that place has problems, the least of which is it's horrible reputation for badfic. Well, I like some of the stuff I've written and this is an easy and free way for me to get it online. So stuff it) and when I started exploring my account, it mentioned that I have to look over their new rules and whatnot before I could do anything. I wasn't actually planning on doing anything, but what the hey, I read 'em.

Well, most of the stuff was pretty standard, more strict then I remember, but I always use spell check and don't post crap, so I wasn't worried. I knew about the new rating system, so I mostly skimmed it, but then I got a shock.

Apparently( a bunch of authors had written to ff.net and requested that their stuff not be fanficced. )

I'm shocked. First of all, if someone want to write fanfic about your stuff, it means they love your stuff and want to explore themes and characters that you as a writer didn't fully explore or explain. And don't give me crap about how you want your work to remain pure or I-don't-even-know-what. As far as I'm concerned, once you've released your works to the world and expect the world to pay you money for the privilege or reading it, you lose a bit of control. It's not in the public domain legally, but it's in the minds of your readers and you'd better expect them to wonder and think about you're book, at least a little bit.

Yes, I vaguely remember Robin Hobb making a statement about it, and it got me mad then too. I had just finished on of his trilogy’s and had enjoyed it a lot. I may have written fanfic, and maybe even bought his books (I had borrowed them) but he made me ticked enough that I didn't bother.

Ooooh, this makes me so ticked. I think I'll write a long, coherent rant about it as soon as I get my thought in order. And get enough time, because I don't have a lot of that either