Round 33, Hour 21

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Or: The Pains and Misery of Shipping, the fic_rush edition.

Do you stare at fandom and not understand why everyone concentrate on the romance while what you want to write is that epic genny longfic? Do your shipping preferences contradict that of anyone else in fandom? Are you THAT OT3er when everyone else goes for the OTP and care not about poor 3? Do you ship the least popular OTP of all time?

Are you the only person who ever wrote Owen/Amy? Or Brannigan/Valerie, for that matter? Do you randomly compare and consider two huge movies and then the penny drops all of a sudden and you go, OMG NATASHA/SELINA IS JUST SO OBVIOUS AND WONDERFUL only to find you are the only person to write this, AGAIN? Do you, too, want MOAR BRUCE/SELINA?

In short: ARE YOU A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE LIKE ME?! AND HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE GALACTIC DOMINATION THROUGH IT???

Share it with us here. That's what we're here for (well, no, we're here to write fic, not to complain about how no one cares about our ship, but, y'know, I'm writing a presentation).

Comments

[pitry.livejournal.com]

It's a chicken and egg problem. See, a lot of the problems you point out here, I tend to blame fandom for, not the specific writer. A writer who declares "OFC’ is NOT a Mary Sue, DON’T HATE ME PLS LUV ME." is responding to the attitude in fandom (whether it had been directed at her or at others) that OFC = Mary Sue = crap. People end up not developing beyond writing Mary Sues because they're too afraid of writing a Mary Sue, so they go about it the wrong direction - instead of learning to build an independent character, they work with some assumption of what a Mary Sue is (which isn't necessarily correct) and try to work backwards on how to make their character not a Mary Sue, which often makes it an even worse 'offender' of the tropes.

There's too much awareness and self awareness of Mary Sues. And this crutch doesn't get dumped in time because of that awareness.

As for whether it belongs online or not... I don't know. My own experience tends to say, actually, bring it on. A lot of my learning experience wasn't just writing but also interacting with people. Granted, the nature of my interaction in writing was actually different from most experiences (not to mention that I admit a large factor of 'how I learned to write' included a huge list of things I couldn't address or do in my writing, so it's very different from the more common limitless fanfic writing). But. There was the interactivity there - writing, seeing what other people write in response, writing some more, not to hear people tell me I'm so great OMG!!!111!, but it really helped to keep the interest going.

But as I said, I'm aware my beginner writing experience is somewhat different than most people.

[lolmac]

I'm almost giggling, given that my beginner experience is also very different, and probably not replicatable now.

I like your points and I wish I could agree with them. My own experiences are getting in my way. But that doesn't mean that anything you've said is wrong: just that I can't personally get behind it. Honestly, I hope that you're right, or at least right for a larger part of the world than I am, because it means that part of the world is shinier than my cynicism sees, and I always prefer it when my cynical side turns out to be wrong. (Yikes, did that make any sense? I hope so.)

I do, definitely, completely agree that the attitude "OFC = Mary Sue = crap" is bad and destructive, and that damage is done, period, as a result of the hating. Especially, "Mary Sue is ALL THE EVIL" seems to have become an all-purpose bludgeon misused against any character or characterization. There's no growing or learning from THAT either.

Still, I'm not letting anyone see my unfinished Mary Sue Blake's 7 Post-GP Fix-it epic monstrosity, even though I don't have the heart to destroy it.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Wait.

You're trying to say I had a discussion in which I was the OPTIMIST? something about this is just wrong.

And OMG ♥ I just love knowing you HAVE an unfinished Mary Sue B7 fic!

[lolmac]

Now you'll be able to blackmail me forevermore. Except that I finally managed to get over feeling ashamed of the whole thing.

But, truthfully: it was EPIC. And sucked EPICALLY.