RatCreature's Journal

Okay, so this probably has happened to many of us, that you read a story, that intersects with your life or experiences in some way. When that happens to me and I start writing a comment, my own experience is then what's in my head as reaction, and basically I recount whatever episode or life experience resonated with that story. Only then at the end of this, I come to the realization that my comment on the story doesn't actually talk about the story as such at all, but just about me. Then I feel really awkward, and more often than not I don't post that comment, and just click the kudo button instead.

However, most authors seem to like comments better than kudos. Does this still hold true for comments that don't actually talk about your story as such but are more or less (over)sharing of personal experiences a story resonated with?

Like okay, say you wrote a roadtrip fic where your characters look at a giant ball of rubber bands or whatever, and then you get a comment that is along the line of "here's my roadtrip experience of looking at a giant rubber band ball". It's not totally unrelated to your story, but not about praising your great characterization, awesome writerly skill or perfect timing either. And of course often it's not about a rubber band ball but some more personal resonance.

What do you think about such comments? Awkward? Still better than kudos? Better not posted because you don't really want to hear random strangers' anecdotes?

As I'm still pondering whether or not to sign up for the upcoming xmenreversebang, that made me once again been wonder why there isn't some place/infrastructure besides (Reverse) Big Bangs to facilitate collaborations. Fests are good insofar that the moderators usually try hard to get everyone paired up, but there is the whole issue of the schedules and deadlines. Why aren't there non-fest places for authors and artists to pitch some project idea to find another fan who would be interested in working together?

Like, it kind of compares to getting a prompt filled somehow, which you can attempt by signing up to a fest or by throwing it out in a kinkmeme, hoping to find someone interested from a random but larger pool. Of course most don't get filled in kinkmemes (mine never have been so far), but the chance is still better than just putting out your idea in your own journal.

I guess the obstacles are the potential social awkwardness (you might have to reject offers of collaboration, because you dislike someone's writing/art/podfic/whatever style or even their proficiency), and also that the likelihood of matching (or even the general interest in collaborations outside of close friends) might not be high enough to make such a forum worthwhile.

OTOH fandoms these days don't have central places anymore, so there isn't even anywhere where you could put up your notice individually for many others to see, like a central (or at least large) general discussion list or a noticeboard.

I'm curious, how many, if any, WIPs do you currently follow? Also which they are, especially if they are in one of my current main fandoms, to see whether I'm missing anything good. I know not everyone likes WIPs, so obviously this is not the post for WIP haters. I like following WIPs along, which has become obvious to me once again now that I read ST: Reboot, where WIPs seem more common than they are in SGA, so the number I keep track of has increased greatly in a short time.

So here's the list of WIPs I currently follow, i.e. WIPs I subscribe to updates for or regularly check (I stopped reading some HP WIPs I used to follow, because currently I'm not much interested in HP, so I'm not listing those). For simplicity it's just title and author with a link, as these are not recs, though I recced some before, and obviously want to know what happens next for all of them:

( cut for length )

That were actually fewer than I thought, though I may have forgotten some.

I've been reading a slash story in which a heated argument between the couple (who are also friends) results in punch being thrown, and then the one punched actually finds the aggression a turn on and it goes on to sex. Somehow this combination of sex and violence doesn't work for me at all, not even in fiction, where I'm not averse to combinations of sex and violence.

Like, I can go along fine if the aggression is against some kind of third party, and one character is turned on by the other being violent, or they are turned on mutually, say if they are both in a barfight or even slaughter others. I can also go along with non-con that involves violence with the victim not being turned on, but I as a reader like it. But if the violence is between the couple (and they are supposed to like each other), uncontrolled violence segueing into sex (rather than say rough sex that is mutually agreed upon) is squicky for me, more so if the violence is not mutual (the latter would be more fighting leading to fucking in some kind of hate sex, which I also don't like, but it is not as bad as one sided violence).

Most often this is shown from the POV of the character the aggression is turned upon rather than the violent character being turned on by the escalation, i.e. A hits B, usually after some provocation, then B somehow finds that aggression/violence (or sometimes the loss of control) hot, and sex follows. I have to admit that I find this particular combination of sex and violence to be surprising as a kink, and it always startles me, but I see this every now and then, and I'm wondering whether it is something that many people like in sex scenes.

So, a poll:

It drives me absolutely crazy when in ST:AOS fic the older, time-traveling Spock is called "Spock Prime" within the story text, assuming the story is told from a POV character withing the fictional universe rather than some jokey outside parody narrator or omniscient meta fiction narrator. It's fine for a pairing label, but please, please find some other way to distinguish the character from the younger Spock in the text. I am usually not that picky about narrative voice, but this just throws me out of the story in a way from which I can't recover. It's one of the few things that will just make me stop reading immediately in this fandom.

After spending quite some time today looking for fanfic that I'd expected to be common but for some reason it isn't, I realized that semi-regularly I look for certain kinds of fanfic that I really expect to find, yet somehow it doesn't exist at all or in much smaller numbers than I'd anticipated from the size of the fandom.

I don't mean that obscure story you yearn to read, but that is somewhat "out there", like for example the SGA/Watership Down fusion I wish someone would write, with the SGA characters as space-exploring rabbits (though, honestly, it makes sense and the two would go great together as I explain in the notes for my fanart for such a universe, so I don't really think it would be that weird a fusion, but I can see why it hasn't yet become a genre. Though it should!), or specific fanfic in small fandoms, like say Spider-Man/Daredevil slash (though when I looked for that today I actually found some I had missed, yay!), but genres, pairings or plots you honestly expected to find.

Then I wondered whether other people have these kinds of lists of fanfic they're searching for periodically. For example every once in a while I look for these:

• CSI: Lady Heather/Gil Grissom D/s fic with Gil as Lady Heather's sub. I don't care whether it were angsty epics or PWPs or whatever, but for some reason almost nobody seems to write this pairing and even fewer with Gil as sub. I realize that het femdom D/s seems less popular than say D/s slash overall, but here's a popular character who's been at least briefly involved with a dominatrix in canon, yet it's hard to find kinky fic for them. I don't get it.
• CSI: AUs in which Grissom is deaf, either becoming deaf after his surgery failed or having been deaf all along in the AU. I've seen a few such stories, but nowhere near as many as I expected.
• Dark Angel: longish fic featuring Max with Logan and/or Alec, without any character bashing happening, and preferably with some Manticore-related plot, but really most important is the absence of character bashing. It shouldn't be hard to find this, but it is.
• Dresden Files: Harry/Ramirez buddy slash, or even just gen friendship stories focusing on these two. Okay, maybe that falls just under the "small fandom" explanation (and is a recent addition to my list), but seriously, there's is some Dresden Files fic, even for the bookverse, so I expected to find at least a few stories with Ramirez.

I don't think of myself as a particularly picky reader, but sometimes I'm thrown out of a story by random mistakes in details that don't even matter much for the story. For example I was just reading a HP story, set around Christmas, as so many of them are around this time of year, and quite enjoyed it, only to come across a line where the POV character remarked that is was "past five and getting dark" or something to that effect. But the story takes place in London in the middle of December, so obviously it would already be dark by then, seeing how sunset there would be a bit before four in the afternoon and even with some remaining twilight after sunset that still means it's plain dark after five. And it's not as if you couldn't look up sunrise and sunset times on the net either, if you're unfamiliar with just how little daylight you get in Northern Europe during winter.

I have no idea why errors that aren't even particularly relevant bother me in written fiction, when I can completely overlook things like that places don't look "correct" on tv, like because they filmed in a different location or things like that. I guess it could be that with tv I just accept some built-in limitations, but written words don't have that excuse.

I rather like D/s stories, obviously not all kinds, for example characters doing the responsible "safe, sane, consensual" thing works less well for me than stories which are a fantasy directly (like slave!fic), rather than a fantasy once removed, but I've been wondering how much characterization (as I see it in the source) matters to me in the context of this kink.

The thing is, at first I was quite sure that how I perceive characterization doesn't have a lot of impact on whether I can get into a D/s story, for example in any pairing I like my preferences for who ought to be submissive and who dominant tend to be fixed, and I figured that that was a result of who my favorite character is, rather than any actual extrapolation I was attempting from the character's personality.

I simply have a preference for my favorite character to be submissive. That is true for me in TS with Jim Ellison, in XF with Mulder, in DS with Fraser, in SW with Obi-Wan, and mostly true with Sheppard in SGA (though I'm a bit more flexible there)... however it didn't hold up in HP. My favorite character is definitely Harry, but while I do read stories with him as submissive sometimes (that is, I'm not actively turned off by those, like I am in some of my other fandoms if a D/s story for my favorite pairings doesn't match my preference), I prefer Harry to be dominant by a vast margin. And I'm not really sure why that is, it might be because submissive!Harry kind of collides with my other kink for powerful!Harry, but then again I actually want my favorite characters to remain powerful and competent, even when I like them to be submissive.

I mean, when a story works for my kinks I'm pretty easy-going wrt characterization, but one thing that will cause me to stop reading even then is when a confident and competent hero character I like is turned into a snivelling, insecure idiot or saddled with neurosis and issues that are just completely not there in canon (it's not as if they don't usually have enough problems without adding random eating disorders and the like).

Anyway, the inexplicable glitch with HP in my personal pattern aside, I still think that my preference for whom I like as submissive in a D/s story is kink for me first, not characterization, though obviously I like stories much better if they get the character to fit with my kink while staying in character or at least arriving at the OOC place starting from canon characterization in a believable progression, rather than starting OOC. And I am curious about other people, so I made a poll:

[Poll #805849]

So I'm rereading some McKay/Sheppard slash fic, great story overall too, only I stumble over Homophobic!Ford. Now, IIRC when I first read story I didn't take much notice of it, because I hadn't read that much SGA slash at that point, and taken as a characterization in an individual story I can buy it. Some people are homophobic after all, even otherwise nice, likable people. But there are quite a lot of stories portraying Ford like that, and it baffles me. Sometimes it seems to me that in S1 team McKay/Sheppard slash he's like the default token homophobe. And I don't get it, not to mention that it rubs me the wrong way because I rather like Ford. Is there any basis in canon for why this is such a popular choice?? I admit that I have watched most eps just once (I don't rewatch a lot in general), so I might have missed some huge clue leading so many to arrive at Homophobic!Ford, but if this is purely a fanon thing, it's definitely one I could do without.

I've been wondering how to handle a certain kind of rec. I think at the core of my dilemma is this: While I obviously rec what I like, a recs page is also always intended to be useful for other fans, other readers. And I think everybody who reads fanfic knows that you like some stories because they appeal to you in personal ways, kinks (sexual and non-sexual) if you will, that may not be widely shared in fandom, whereas others appeal because of things that are (nearly) universally appreciated in a specific fandom. The latter stories are often those which get recced everywhere, and generally unproblematic when phrasing the rec, and not what concerns me here.

Since I want my recs to be useful, I usually try to point out if I rec something and a major appeal for me was that it pushed one or more of my specific buttons, especially if the kink sort of pushes the boundary of canon characterization as I see it. That is simple enough when those buttons are a straightforward kink, like for example D/s stories. I usually don't rec if I know that the story is, like, ridiculously OOC and I only liked the kink aspect, but obviously there's a wide and murky area between characterization that is just like we see it in the source and it being twisted completely to serve some kink, or genre or specific plot you like.

Basically I like recs to be transparent, which is why I also point out in a rec if I notice a bunch of typos, but still enjoyed the story, because I'm aware that others won't see any point in clicking on something if the author seems to have a homonym problem or triggers any of the other spelling/grammar pet peeves that people have, whereas some readers like me might not be bothered that much.

My problems with recs start when it isn't really easy to pinpoint why I enjoyed a story with a genre label, but I'm still aware that the reason I like the story is not because it's perfectly in character, or since I maintain an AU recs page a really great extrapolation from canon. But the thing is that I may like it because of that, because certain kinds of OOC-ness is something I enjoy in the service of the kinds of stories I like, even if the author doesn't slowly take me there, but just makes a leap (which especially in AUs is not that brain-breaking). And trying to explain it in more detail in a rec often makes it sound as if I didn't truly like the story, or like I'm criticizing the story instead of reccing it, because I end up inserting all kinds of qualifiers.

It's easy enough to rec if the "problematic" elements are something I'm not generally fond of, but the story convinced and enthralled me nonetheless, because then I can be reasonably sure that it might work for other readers too. Whereas it's hard if I'm aware the story worked in concordance with my preferences, but not those that I could easily label.

I mean, how does one say (diplomatically!) in a rec things like that the story was entertaining, had you totally hooked with the plot and you liked the elements X, Y, and Z about it, but you are aware that others might think the characters are OOC, the plot full of melodrama, the whole set-up like something out of a Lord King Bad challenge, however you did not like it in a train-wreck fashion or anything, but had honestly a good time reading it? And I don't want to sound insulting, and not like I'm apologizing for my preferences either...

The easiest way would be of course not to rec, and thus to avoid the whole issue, and only rec those stories you are fairly certain would be widely considered "good", "in character" or whatever, but on the other hand it is a rec page based on my preferences after all, and I did honestly enjoy those stories, and I'm fairly sure some other people would enjoy the stories I have in mind just like I do.

I haven't been following fandom newsletters for that long, but they highlighted and made me notice that I my reactions to announcements of fanart compared to those of fanfic differ significantly. It's the same with announcements in communities, but in newsletters there's often a bunch of fic links and a bunch of art links, so it became more obvious for me.

I always check out all the art (well drawings and such, I'm not much interested in photomanipulations or icons), regardless of the pairing or content, or whether I know the artist or not, simply because it only takes a few seconds to take a look at the art and decide whether I like it, and then maybe looking closer or slightly longer at some details (I'm not on dial-up, but I'm also just talking about the time it takes to take something in once a page has loaded not connection/bandwidth issues). Whereas I don't click on most of the fic links unless they make me curious in some way, maybe the title sounds interesting, or I heard of the author, or it's a pairing I like, anyway something more than just the link being there, simply because it is always more effort to decide whether I'll give fanfic a try, even if it is just reading the summary and author's notes. So it's quite a bit harder for fanfic to get noticed by me.

OTOH fanart somehow has much less impact for me than fanfic. I mean, fanfic characterizations, arguments, theories and the like, affect how I see the characters and plots in the source, and how I interpret them. Sometimes it's a slight, but cumulative effect (sort of like a fanon build-up), but occasionally it also happens that a single story is just so ingenious in its interpretation of canon that after reading it I see the source differently, for example like a theory or fanwanking that's the background or basis for a fic to explain something, or just a great view inside the head of a character that makes me understand them, things like that. Fanfic I like also kind of stays with me much longer than even the fanart I like most. Somehow, at least so far, fanart has never had such a lasting effect on me. The way a character is drawn may really work for me, but that's more the surface. It doesn't change my view of the character.

So I'm more likely to look at any fanart, and I really enjoy the visuals of good fanart, it produces immediate reactions, and I may feedback, but it's somehow "weaker" for me than fanfic. And I'm curious whether it is the same for others. So have you ever looked at a piece of fanart and it had lasting impact beyond the image and the immediate reactions/emotions it evoked, the way fanfic sometimes has?

I've just read this HP WIP (no the one with the "ma'am" all over the place btw), which hasn't been updated since October or so. Something I knew when I started reading. I really have no problem with reading WIPs, even ones with infrequent updates, those not likely to be ever finished, or abandoned ones. As those who've seen one of my (frequently lengthy) list posts on this subject on FCA-L or elsewhere probably already know. I like reading WIPs, and whether or not they get finished, as long as like what's posted I'm okay with having read whatever is shared. I usually remember enough to follow a story even if installments are months apart (I blame that on following infrequently published indie comics for years *g*), unless it's written in odd chunks with rewrites of previous sections and stuff being posted out of order. Though if the installments are posted too far apart I might forget about having followed a particular WIP, unless it's posted to my flist or I'm on an update list. Which is not to say that I don't like stories better if they're finished eventually, but the finished/unfinished status just isn't that crucial to me.

That said, I liked this WIP quite a lot (in case you're interested, it was "The Mirror of Maybe" by Midnight Blue), and considered sending feedback to the author. My first impulse was to write back that I liked it, point out a couple of the things that I enjoyed in particular, and then ask whether it's still active, because then I'd check the story from time to time. Then I remembered seeing posts how some authors find it obnoxious behavior to be asked whether they are still working on a WIP, especially if they're stalled and/or abandoned it. So I wondered whether I should maybe rather omit the part asking about future installments, or maybe not write at all. Considering that there apparently is a list for this story with over 4100 subscribers (and just how large is HP fandom anyway?) the author probably already gets enough emails nagging her about when (if?) the next installment is going to be posted. I could just join the other 1050 people on the update announcement list (the larger list is aparently for discussion too), and assume that the fact that the update list is still open implies that the WIP has not been abandoned (I assume that authors would close lists dedicated to WIPs if they truly abandon them), so that it's actually worth joining an update list.

So when you write feedback to a WIP that hasn't been updated in a while, but is not visibly abandoned, is it better to avoid the topic of potential future installments (and the related areas in feedback, like what you think will happen based on the story so far etc.) entirely? Or is it only obnoxious if the feedback doesn't just ask about it, but makes the kind of rude writing demands to continue that you sometimes see?

crack_van totally works. Not only do I now apparently read X-Men Comicverse fiction when previously I stuck with fanfic for the movies, no that would be harmless. I also spent quite some time during the last days watching CSI episodes, because the CSI overview gave me the last nudge to give the series a try. Sure it's not like I wasn't aware of the potential consequences of reading a community where people pimp their fandoms (it's not like you need a huge surgeon general's warning to figure those out), it's just -- I have a number of peripheral fandoms in which I have no real idea where to find good fanfic/recs, and crack_van is good for that too.

On the upside it turns out I can actually read an introduction to a fandom and find that informative, but still feel no interest whatsoever to check out the fiction. Like I didn't develop any interest in Blakes7 or Homicide or The Professionals or Pop Slash (okay, I read one of the recced stories for pop slash, I don't think that counts). Who knows, maybe exposure to temptation will even make me more resilient in the face of new fandoms in the long term.

Anyway, about CSI. Before reading any of the fanfic (I still prefer not to read fiction until I've seen at least some of the source) I watched a couple of CSI episodes, and several of those from third season showed Grissom's hearing problems. So, since this is a crime show and doesn't particularly dwell on the emotional impact of his illness I thought it would be really easy to find fanfic exploring this. But either I'm not good at finding stuff (which is possible, after all I'm not familiar with the fandom yet), or it isn't a popular topic as I had assumed. I mean, the fandoms where I got most of my "tv fan socialization" so to speak, were really large (like TS or XF) and somehow I've come to expect these obvious fanfic topics as a given, like the blatantly missing scenes, the fic dealing with the glaring emotional issue some character has, the emotional fallout of something that is never seen on screen, because it's "off-topic" for a cop show etc. I think of that as the "meat and potatoes" kind of fanfic, the topics/themes/scenes for which (in large fandoms) you'll usually find dozens variations of fanfic dealing with them, and most of these stories aren't terribly original, or brilliant pieces of writing (though some are), but I like to read that kind of fanfic, because it fills in the obvious blanks even I see in a source.

And before I inadvertently start an "entitlement" kerfuffle or something similar, I don't think of fanfic (fandom) as a supermarket, where I can always expect to find exactly the kind of fanfic I'm looking for. But I have to admit, it is kinda neat when it does work like that, you know? So if by chance any of you know of CSI fanfic dealing with Grissom's hearing loss, I'd like to read that.

Also, I was browsing for some Everwood fanfic (and I meant to rec an Everwood story too, come to think of it, but now I can't find the frelling bookmark, and of course I can't remember the author or title either >.<), and I noticed a couple of stories with German phrases/words as titles. And I was wondering about that, because I don't tend to come across, for example, Spanish or French phrases as titles in fanfic (or I don't notice, which is definitely a possibility as well), but see German ones semi-regularly, though from my impressions not as often as Latin ones. Anyway, I've been wondering why that is. I mean, I get that in X-Files fandom it probably is because of some of the episode titles, but Everwood? Does German look/sound exotic or something?

Somehow I find it amusing that the idea that Blair really knows how to fly helicopters, that appeared first, iirc, in jacquez's Dog Tag series, has made it into the list of fanfic themes at the Cascade Library, together with categories like amnesia stories, stories about Jim and/or Blair with children, etc.

I still remember the discussions about the story when it was first published, and how many found it a not very believable reading of canon. Now it's a subgenre (albeit a small one). The workings of fanfic are strange indeed.