Tuesday, August 6, 2002

15 March 2002

So I lied about moving to geocities. I'm really moving to my own domain: bitchmare.net. The website isn't ready for primetime yet, but the blog is there and ready to go. bitchmare.net/blog.html

1 March 2002

I've decided to give blogger a whirl, so please move over to the new blog for the time being. And to all one of you who have linked me, please update your links accordingly.

Thanks!

28 February 2002

I know that I should be appalled. Yet I am not. I'm giggling. ...and rather shamefully intrigued.

27 February 2002

And to the person coming here looking for LOZ Link Yaoi Fanfiction: dude, there's no good LoZ yaoi on the web. I've looked. There's only masturbatory crap written by teenie bopper girls who are scared to write about two men in love. That is, they have to make one of the characters a woman with a dick. Weepy, overly angsty, trembling in the throes of a first love, afraid to whisper his (but really her) loved one's name.... Because, you see, it's all just them Mary Sueing themselves into Sheik's pants (in more ways than one). If you want good yaoi, you've got to go to another fandom.

But if anyone can find any LoZ yaoi--or, better yet, YURI--that's on par with the best of XF slash (ha ha, right)...DAMN girl, let me know!

26 February 2002

To the person who came here looking for "Zelda and Link Romance Fanfics": uhhh...Google gave you the wrong page. Try here. You'll probably prefer this one, but right now I'm a little more fond of this one. You probably won't like this one all that much. And please remember, fanfic authors live on a steady diet of feedback!

Aren't I just too helpful?

22 February 2002

In case you didn't notice.

I'm feeling pretty ignorant right now. I gots ta learn me some more of that HTML stuff.

But first, another slice of cake from a co-worker's going away party. Mmm...cake...

18 February 2002

I have today off, and I'm sooooo booooooored.

It's stupid, really, because there is stuff I could be doing. I could be cleaning the pad (but it's pretty clean right now), I could be cleaning tack (again?), I could even be writing something (but I have so little to say--no, it's not writer's block, don't get that thankyouverymuch, I'm either writing or I'm not, and I'm not more than I am--Next on "Reasons Why I'm Not a Real Writer"!!!). And there's no good tv on.

Okay, I lied. The USA/Belarus game is on. I'll watch that.

And Bev, you don't have to be perfect. Please don't be! You'll just make the rest of us look bad if you are.

15 February 2002

So I was having an e-mail conversation with this guy, and I made some comment about a topic of discussion making good blog fodder. He replies that he's sure that it would, but he would probably never read it ("I must apologize for that," he says) because he never reads blogs.

"Why?" I ask. "Don't you enjoy watching people stroke their egos in public?"

"No," he responds, "That's okay. I just feel uncomfortable reading people's private journals."

"Dude," I say, greatly puzzled. "First of all, it's not private--it's posted on the web. Second, just what is it about me that makes you think that I'd record every little bit of my day in a journal?"

"Well, nothing really. I just don't want to intrude on your innermost thoughts and feelings."

...

Dear Diary,
Today I met the CUTEST BOY EVER!!!!! His name is Tommy and he sits in front of me in algebra! he has RED hair! EVEN BETTER at lunch Jenni told me that Debbie told her that Sam says that Jill says that Tommy says that I look nice. I'M SOOOO CRUSHING ON HIM! If he doesn't ask me to the sock hop I'LL DIE!!!!
That's all for today!
~*~LIsA~*~
p.s. LnT4EVA!!!!!!1111

13 February 2002

Ahhh, sweet chocolate infusion.

Wouldn't it be cool to be sitting at your desk and have something like this happen? I know it would certainly liven up my workday.

Simpsons-quote-spouting Pac Man aside, today was going to be "Reasons why I Hate the Fandom I Love to Hate" day, but I got sidetracked. Please note that I did not say "sideswiped," because the fellow who knocked me off course is not the sideswipin' type. No, no, he's far too polite. Far too self-effacing. Far too...sensitive.

Yeah, you know who I'm talking about. You've seen him in fanfic. You've seen him in online amateur fic. Shoot, you've seen him in every nook and crany of your favorite bookstore (though he's most often found in the romance and fantasy sections).

He is...The Noble Hero.

He's handsome! He's sensitive! He's humble! He's done great things, but he would rather people not make a big deal about it or give him anything in return. He just wants to be loved (by you...well, really, by his author, who loves him more than she could ever love a real person) by an equally humble woman. He's patient. He's tolerant. He'll never snark at you for being obsessed with keeping laundry off of the floor or hanging the toilet paper a certain way. If he ever does get angry, it's a righteous and justified anger. If he ran a personal ad (which he'd never do because a) he doesn't need to, he's got women swooning over him and b) because he would *never* stoop to advertising himself--why, that's so arrogant!), it would read something along the lines of "Sexy sensitive single seeks equally thoughtful, kind S.O. to share walks along the beach with. Will never lie, steal, or cheat...unless forced to in order to save the world as we know it, and even then will only do so reluctantly and will be sure to feel guilty about it for rest of life."

Now, if I ran across this in the Post's personals section, my reaction would be a big "yeah, RIGHT." I mean, does anyone know anyone like this in real life? Do you know any Mr. Wonderfuls? I sure don't.

Real people are fascinating creatures. They can be kind, aggravating, humble, impatient, sensitive, and self-centered all at once. I like (and, uh, for those of you who need to be told this: everything in this blog is all about my personal taste, not about universal invariants) real people. I want my heroes to be real. And real people aren't always rational and they aren't always pretty. (Of course, I think it goes without saying that nobility can manifest itself in many different ways, and that many different kinds of people can do noble things, but for the purposes of this entry, I'm just assuming noble in its most common (cliched?) sense.) Noble Mr. Wonderful just...bores me.

(Would this be a good time to make a chemistry joke? You know, something along the lines of "of course he's noble-- that's why he's so inert!" Ooooh, that was painfully bad. I think I better not try to be funny.)

But, geez, the overly noble hero seems to be everywhere in fiction these days.

I can understand Mr. Wonderful's prevalance in romance novels. The romance genre (which I am not above indulging in every so often) is all about escapism. You pick one up knowing that you're going to pull the reader equivalent of a Mary Sue and stick yourself right in the spunky heroine's shoes as she falls for the noble hero. (Okay, there's a second kind of romance novel hero: the handsome rogue. No noble fellow, he. I'm talking about the first kind.) The whole point is to allow the reader to live out her more lurid fantasies via the book. So in order for the book to work, the author needs to make the leading man generic enough to suit many different women.

Mr. Wonderful's prevalance in fantasy novels puzzles me. Granted, he's very often Mr. *Reluctantly* Wonderful (ah, the reluctant hero...the incredibly boring twin of the anti-hero), but aside from his penchant for asking "Why Me?" or longing for a simpler life, he's still Mr. Wonderful. Shoot, very often he's Mr. Wonderful *because* he longs for a simpler life. After all, Mr. Wonderful is never arrogant nor does he believe that he deserves a little praise or adulation for all of the (yes) wonderful things he's done. Anyway, I know that Mr. Wonderful is the archetypical fantasy hero, but why do so many authors continue to use him? Perhaps because they, too, want to indulge their reader's needs for escaping reality and thereby have to provide a generic vehicle that most anyone can fit into? Maybe I'm missing out because I've become more of an observer in my reading--I want to learn something new about the way people truly are and what kinds of traits extraordinary circumstances can bring out in your everyday, somewhat self-centered, somewhat aggravating, but fully *real* Joe. (Yes, yes I'm fully aware that there's reems of fanfic and original amateur fic out there where the hero sits around and angsts about his life and gets all bitter in the author's desperate attempt to be "realistic," but really that's just an overly hormonal teenager indulging his own angst, not a hero. Look, I *told* you I don't like anybody! Heh heh.)

Seriously, can anybody help me figure out why this is?

Feh. I get cranky too easily.

11 February 2002

Added a bit of info to Bitch Mare's page. Nothing to write home about, though.

8 February 2002

I forgot to add that I do think the whole Mary-Louise Parker thing is kinda cool, because her initials are MLP, which makes me think My Little Ponies, which are what I spent far too much time playing with as a little girl.

Of course, my herd of ponies vanished while I was in college. Rrr! I chewed my mother out over dumping them without consulting me, which made her feel bad, which made me feel bad, because I probably would have told her to go right ahead...except for Bow-Tie. Yeah, okay, Bow-Tie didn't do anything much in the movie, but she was the first pony I ever got. And, damn it, your first always has a special place in your heart.

8 February 2002

Aww Bev, you know I do it just because I'm in love with the sound of my own voice. After all, that's why I've got this durn blog-type-thing...because, damnit, people should care what I think (riiiiiight)! You know, stroking one's own ego in public and other equally shameless behaviors.

In other (and extremely boring) news, I had my first celebrity look-alike moment ever yesterday. My mother's (much younger) boss told me, apropos of nothing, that she thinks I look like Mary-Louise Parker. I don't see the resemblance.

Wait...what was the point of this entry, again? I don't think I had one.

6 February 2002

I frequently visit the Godawful Fanfic Message Board to find out what's new and horrifying in the fanfic world (a Balto/Jenna smutfic? Balto???). Just yesterday, I followed a link to the site of an author whose work had recently been held up as a prime example of godawful fic. Turns out this author had realized that her work was being discussed on the GAFF mb and decided to post this in response.

Let me state right now that I know nothing (zilch, nadda, zero-ho) about Emergency! and its fandom. So I can't address any of the fandom-specific points she made.

But she did make several comments that apply to fandom and fanfiction in general, and I agree with a little (it ain't cool to be an asshole over something so trivial as a fanfic) and disagree with a lot (what's the point of posting your work if you're going to ignore feedback that will help you become a better writer? How can anyone argue that a lack of research into the fic's subject matter not have a detrimental impact on the fic's overall quality? Since when is laziness on the part of the canon author(s) a justification for laziness on the part of the fanfic author? Shoot--I read XF fanfic primarily because the best XF fanauthors are ten times more attentive to characterization and the series canon than many of the XF scriptwriters are.).

Blahblahblah, anyway, I was nodding and shaking my head and thinking "okay, whatever, this is uninteresting" until I hit this:

I'd also like to point out this. Someone said that just because a persons fan fiction is popular, it doesn't make it good. I beg to differ. This is amateur writing. If someone's work is read by and accepted by the majority, then that means they are good. They are doing something that others are not. They are popular because their fics are entertaining and that is what makes a fic good or great, not the grammar or placement of sentences. No matter how perfect your grammar and sentence structure is, if the story is boring, no one will read it.

and the little bells started ringing and the neon orange light that says "Blog Fodder!" started flashing in my head.

If I'm following her argument correctly, she's saying that in amateur writing, popular = entertaining = good. There are people out there who still think this?

Yes, it makes sense that if something is wildly popular, then it must be pretty entertaining. Why else would people keep coming back to it? (I'm assuming that we're defining popular as something that gets a lot of positive feedback or generates a lot buzz in the fandom, not as something that simple gets a lot of hits.) But that doesn't make it good writing, and just about any writer with an ounce of sense (i.e., one who can identify the essential components for a good story) will tell you that.

Of course a story can't be boring (but define boring, please...I find antique stores deathly dull, while my best friend falls asleep when I turn on a football game), but you really only ought to worry about the excitement factor after you've mastered grammar. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, basic use of the english language all comprise the foundation for the story. I don't care how exciting you think your plot is...if you can't write a comprehensible sentence, no one will have a clue what the plot is supposed to be.

Wait, why am I even saying this? Who the hell needs to be told this?

As best as I can figure, it's just because a lot of readers don't know any better. When you've got a young, relatively inexperienced, or just plain dumb (hey, it happens) fandom, the readers are just as easily blinded with bullshit as with brilliance.

This is a widely-known-and-lauded piece by a very well known-and-loved author in The Fandom I Love to Hate (coming soon to a blog near you!). It's chock full o' inappropriate word choices, preposition confusion, and downright purple prose. But I can see how readers who are still having problems with subject/verb agreement would have problems discerning the difference between evokative imagery and downright flowery imagery. IIRC, there's even one review that gushes over his "baroque imagery." Now, while I'll grant that "...their hearts mingled in an everlasting soup of enchantment..." inspires one heck of a visual, there's something wrong when your reader starts to laugh (and ask herself "condensed or chunky?") when you're not trying to be funny.

Confusion is one thing, the power of hype is another. There are lots of fics out there that are wildly popular because at one point someone spread the good word about them. Or, the author herself spread the good word about them. Thing is, while these fics are very often solid stories, there's usually nothing particularly remarkable about them. Sometimes, they only stand out because they're unremarkable solid pieces surrounded by drek. So, good? Yes, usually. Worth the adulation? Not really. I can name a bunch of fics that are regarded as classics in both XF fandom and The Fandom I Love to Hate that just ain't worth the hype. And, yes, I am also guilty of buying into said hype at one time or another. The problem is, very often authors start believing their own hype and get a wee bit too sensitive when someone does come along with criticism. (Notice that I'm not linking anything here...what can I say, I'm yella!) Very often, these fics simply get a big push because they're accompanied by fanart that potential readers can see and find rather thrilling. (Don't get me started on wacked-out XF photo manips. Especially wacked-out XF photo manips that involve a Mary Sue...you see yourself as Angelina Jolie, honey? My eyes! My eyes!) Fic propaganda? Now I'm making myself laugh.

And, there's also the cheap thrill factor. Hence the popularity of fics that aren't even fics.

Certainly, popular fic can be very good. POpular fic can be screamingly good. There's a lot of fanfic out there that is wildly popular and with good reason. A little "Iolokus," anyone? Why, yes, thank you. I'll take it. Again and again. And again and again!

Now I'm sure you could say that this peeves me because I think I'm all that yet I am not widely lauded as a fanfic writin' genius. Well, okay. I'll be honest. I get off on praise as much as the next gal. C'mon, stroke my ego, baby! Ooooh, yeeeeeah. And, of course, it's aggravating to see something I've actually spent some time and effort on drift unnoticed in a sea of crap (or, perhaps I should say, "an everlasting soup of crap") But then I think about the people handing out the love in The Fandom I Love to Hate, and I'm rather thankful that I'm not getting much. Praise on FFN? Err...no thanks. Obligatory disclaimer: the author does not think she is all the shit. She is the shit to herself, but who isn't their own shit? She is fully aware, however, that there is other shit out there that kicks her shit's round brown butt. But she does try with to make her shit extra shitty. Give her that, please. Offer not valid in certain locations. Consult your local store for details.

Interestingly enough! I've found that most of the kids who fall into this popular fanfic = good fanfic trap are the ones who mostly loudly decry conformity on various bbs and mls. Go figure.

So in conclusion: Lord, how I love intrafandom wars!

5 February 2002

I archived the older entries today, and now this place looks pretty empty. I gotta come up with something to rant about right quick!

5 February 2002

It's 52 degrees in my office right now. 52 degrees!

I got my boss to agree that this constitutes a hostile working environment, but I can't quite get him to agree that we should therefore be allowed to go home. What, does he think I'll just head back to my apartment and go to bed?

...

In other news, earlier this morning I was browsing Elfwood for the first time in about a month. Score! How awesome is that? I think I'm going to have to go re-read "C'mere" to celebrate.