Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2010-06-30 10:33 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2010-06-30 10:33 am
But It's Evil!
I don't know exactly when I discovered fandom, but I believe it was when I was twelve or so, about a decade ago, and so it seems an appropriate time to begin posting my fanfiction to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
riona_archivic, which I have created as a way of keeping all my writing backed up in one place. I'm up to mid-2004, working forwards. You don't need to join it - it's really for my own reference, and I'll still be posting new fanfiction here - but you're welcome to join if you're interested. In addition to all the fiction available on the Internet, it contains quite a bit of terrible writing I've later taken down out of embarrassment (filed on the old shame tag JUST SO IT'S EASIER FOR YOU TO FIND IT AND ME TO CRINGE), and I'm planning to archive my unposted and unfinished 2004 NaNoWriMo effort there (I suppose I'll create an 'unposted' tag for things that have never been posted anywhere). Also, I've added a bit of context and commentary for most things in the headers, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
If you do join, the tags page sorts the fiction by fandom, pairing and year written. I would strongly advise not adding it to your flist, because there are hundreds of stories I haven't posted yet and it would become very cluttering very quickly.
Some notes on the experience of archiving:
- I actually wasn't as bad a writer in my early attempts as I'd thought I was. I wasn't good, certainly, and some of my early work makes me cringe, but I was never really terrible. (Although I did occasionally write things that were incredibly ill-advised. DON'T READ THE FINAL FANTASY FAIRYTALES. JUST DON'T.)
- In a way, reading my early works, which simply and obviously weren't good, is less painful than reading later ones, which are almost good but scuppered by a couple of glaring flaws. I suppose I have more distance from the earlier ones, both emotionally and stylistically. Later not-good fics are too close to my present writing for comfort.
- I can see my writing evolving over the years! It is quite exciting.
- In my first few years, I wasn't really 'in' fandoms; something in a canon would interest me, so I'd write a fic about it, and then I'd move onto the next interesting thing in the next canon. I think the first fandom I really felt I had a presence in was Red Dwarf, although my fanfiction for it has been lost. (This is probably fortunate; it was not good fanfiction.)
- I don't write female characters as much as I should, but I'm coming to realise that that wasn't always the case. In my early teenage years, I wrote to explore ideas that interested me, and sometimes those ideas involved girls. What changed? I never stopped loving female characters; why did I stop writing them? Can I return to my original 'the gender of the character is irrelevant; wouldn't this make a cool story?' attitude?
- Of course, the larger number of female characters in my early writing can be in part attributed to the fact that I wrote more about original characters, many of them female. My original characters in my early teens were all such brats.
- I've always been primarily a gen writer. I'd thought this was an inclination I discovered in the Supernatural fandom, because I didn't really 'ship anything in Supernatural, but no; my fanfiction has always been predominantly gen. Supernatural wasn't an anomaly; the anomalies were Scrubs and Top Gear, where most of my writing was slash.
- Sometimes I recognise elements of characters I would later write in my characterisation of earlier ones, which is always a bit disconcerting but was particularly so when I realised that my Gippal/Baralai fanfiction was on some level Jeremy Clarkson/David Mitchell.
- My fourteen-year-old self was not a great wit, but this extract from her attempt at a Lord of the Rings Mary-Sue parody did sort of crack me up:
"We must go up the Snowy Mountain," cried Gandald.
Amy knew there was going to be an avalanche. "Let's not bother. I heard on the weather forecast that there would be avalanches today."
"OK," said Gandalf.
A reminder, in case you missed it: if you decide you want to join the archive, you won't want to add it to your flist. I've still got six years of archiving to get through. There are literally hundreds of entries to come. (Also, please bear in mind the year in which something was written. I certainly hope I've improved over the past decade. If you hold something I wrote at thirteen to the same standard to which you hold the things I am writing in my twenties, you are going to be disappointed.)
riona_archivic, which I have created as a way of keeping all my writing backed up in one place. I'm up to mid-2004, working forwards. You don't need to join it - it's really for my own reference, and I'll still be posting new fanfiction here - but you're welcome to join if you're interested. In addition to all the fiction available on the Internet, it contains quite a bit of terrible writing I've later taken down out of embarrassment (filed on the old shame tag JUST SO IT'S EASIER FOR YOU TO FIND IT AND ME TO CRINGE), and I'm planning to archive my unposted and unfinished 2004 NaNoWriMo effort there (I suppose I'll create an 'unposted' tag for things that have never been posted anywhere). Also, I've added a bit of context and commentary for most things in the headers, if you're interested in that sort of thing.If you do join, the tags page sorts the fiction by fandom, pairing and year written. I would strongly advise not adding it to your flist, because there are hundreds of stories I haven't posted yet and it would become very cluttering very quickly.
Some notes on the experience of archiving:
- I actually wasn't as bad a writer in my early attempts as I'd thought I was. I wasn't good, certainly, and some of my early work makes me cringe, but I was never really terrible. (Although I did occasionally write things that were incredibly ill-advised. DON'T READ THE FINAL FANTASY FAIRYTALES. JUST DON'T.)
- In a way, reading my early works, which simply and obviously weren't good, is less painful than reading later ones, which are almost good but scuppered by a couple of glaring flaws. I suppose I have more distance from the earlier ones, both emotionally and stylistically. Later not-good fics are too close to my present writing for comfort.
- I can see my writing evolving over the years! It is quite exciting.
- In my first few years, I wasn't really 'in' fandoms; something in a canon would interest me, so I'd write a fic about it, and then I'd move onto the next interesting thing in the next canon. I think the first fandom I really felt I had a presence in was Red Dwarf, although my fanfiction for it has been lost. (This is probably fortunate; it was not good fanfiction.)
- I don't write female characters as much as I should, but I'm coming to realise that that wasn't always the case. In my early teenage years, I wrote to explore ideas that interested me, and sometimes those ideas involved girls. What changed? I never stopped loving female characters; why did I stop writing them? Can I return to my original 'the gender of the character is irrelevant; wouldn't this make a cool story?' attitude?
- Of course, the larger number of female characters in my early writing can be in part attributed to the fact that I wrote more about original characters, many of them female. My original characters in my early teens were all such brats.
- I've always been primarily a gen writer. I'd thought this was an inclination I discovered in the Supernatural fandom, because I didn't really 'ship anything in Supernatural, but no; my fanfiction has always been predominantly gen. Supernatural wasn't an anomaly; the anomalies were Scrubs and Top Gear, where most of my writing was slash.
- Sometimes I recognise elements of characters I would later write in my characterisation of earlier ones, which is always a bit disconcerting but was particularly so when I realised that my Gippal/Baralai fanfiction was on some level Jeremy Clarkson/David Mitchell.
- My fourteen-year-old self was not a great wit, but this extract from her attempt at a Lord of the Rings Mary-Sue parody did sort of crack me up:
"We must go up the Snowy Mountain," cried Gandald.
Amy knew there was going to be an avalanche. "Let's not bother. I heard on the weather forecast that there would be avalanches today."
"OK," said Gandalf.
A reminder, in case you missed it: if you decide you want to join the archive, you won't want to add it to your flist. I've still got six years of archiving to get through. There are literally hundreds of entries to come. (Also, please bear in mind the year in which something was written. I certainly hope I've improved over the past decade. If you hold something I wrote at thirteen to the same standard to which you hold the things I am writing in my twenties, you are going to be disappointed.)
no subject
no subject
Kick who out?
no subject
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no subject
Ah. For some reason I find it surprising that there are manpersons on LJ. /sexist