So you probably know that I had a couple of issues with Endgame, especially what happened to Gamora, and this is my attempt to fix them. (Pay attention, James Gunn.)
Title: A Scar on the World
Fandom: MCU/Guardians of the Galaxy
Characters: Gamora, Natasha
Summary: Gamora is trying to come to terms with being alone and displaced in time. Luckily, the universe isn’t done with either her or Natasha Romanoff.
Tumblr’s hatred of first-person fanfic gets me down, and not just because I’ve written so much of it. Every time I see one of those “oh, the first word was ‘I’ *closes tab*” jokes I’m just kinda reminded that for all the good work people have done bringing fanfiction into the mainstream, for all that folks are beginning to understand the importance of transformative works, it’s still seen as fundamentally lesser than published fiction. It can’t just be that people don’t like first-person narratives, or else The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Colour Purple, Jane Eyre and countless others would never have made it to print. The implication is always “first-person fanfiction, i.e. a lot of fanfiction, is just teenage girls making dumb self-inserts” and I always figured we’d have got past that by now.
And also, yes, because I’ve written so much of it.
One thing to write a fanfic, another to deal with deadlines, formats, inputs. Fanfic writers cannot understand.
S.E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders
(This tweet of hers has since been deleted otherwise I’d link it.)
My first thought was, clearly this woman has never participated in a big bang before. But it honestly goes so much deeper than that…
You know, I’m always proudest to call myself a fan fic writer when someone, especially someone like S.E., bashes on it. It’s like I’m harboring this little secret about what I actually do when I write fan fiction versus what they’re accusing me of. And while people who put us down about writing fan fic are trying to make us look like idiots, if you ask me, they’re the ones who end up looking stupid. It’s always apparent when someone who gives you crap for writing fan fic has no idea what they’re talking about other than what they’ve heard. They have no idea the amount of passion, dedication, or heart that goes into fan fiction. They have no idea how supportive (for the most part…) the community is. They don’t know the fear of putting oneself “out there” when sharing their work, or what it feels like to have someone admire your work even though you’re not a published author. They might never know what it feels like to have something that brings them so much joy laughed at, or mocked, or disregarded because it’s different. They cannot understand.
Yes, S.E. is a published author, she wrote her first novel as a teenager, and the book is still well known today. She knows about these grueling deadlines, and formats, and inputs she speaks of. But what she seems to be missing about us measly fan fic writers? So. Do. We.
The thing is, countless fan fic writers are writing because it’s an escape, because it’s something we’re passionate about, because it’s a way for our voices to be heard; a lot of us will stop at nothing to be able to write even just a little bit every single day. So many of us are full time students, parents, holding full time jobs, often times doing any combination of the three and so much more. Dead lines? Yeah. I have them. I get to write when the kiddos go down for a nap. Two hours. If I don’t get out what I have to say in those two hours the opportunity is gone unless I want to sacrifice something else (like sleep, for example). Many others are squeezing in words on their lunch breaks or in between classes, staying up late to get something put on a page because they worked all day or haven’t had time otherwise. Sure it’s not a “real” deadline. No publisher or editor is hanging a contract over our heads, threatening our jobs. But you know what comes with that publisher? What comes with that editor and that deadline? A paycheck. Compensation for the time you’ve spent writing. A paycheck just like you’d receive at any other job. So yeah, we may not have “real” deadlines, according to published authors such as the acclaimed S. E. Hinton, but that’s because no one’s forking over cash in exchange for a word count by Monday. We’re writing because we love it. Because we want to share a piece of ourselves whether it comes with money attached or not. We’re writing because we care about something so much, it spills out of our hearts and onto the page in the form of high school AU’s, and slow burns.
We may not understand deadlines according to the “real writing world”, but we sure as hell understand doing what we can when we can because otherwise we won’t get the chance. That does not lessen our skill in any way, shape, or form.
But input, oh. We don’t understand input. …Except for you know what comes along with all that fan fiction we’re not being paid to write? Input. In every single form imaginable. Kudos, and comments, and reblogs, and likes. That is our input. Reviews, recommendations, criticism most of us don’t ask for, thrown at us on our AO3 accounts and our tumblrs, our fanfiction.net accounts, our livejournals, and our wattpads — places most of us go to for solace. Whether we want to see said input or not, it’s there, glaringly apparent. And a lot of times it’s great input! A positive comment on one of my fics can make my day. But sometimes, just like input any published writer may receive, it is not kind. Often times it’s harsh, degrading, discouraging. And we don’t have editors, or assistants, or publishers to keep us going. We don’t have the buffer of “well I’m getting paid to do this so it doesn’t matter whether they like my work or not.” All we have is each other, and our own strength, strength a lot of us have garnered from both tough life experiences and you guessed it, being a lowly, silly fan fic writer.
So you know what? Go ahead. You keep on giving your [shitty, unwelcomed] input on what you think about me writing fan fiction and what I could or could not ever understand because I’m not like you. I’ll be over here doing something I love, something I often times have to fight to be able to do, and I’ll keep doing it because nothing you or anyone else could ever say will make me feel like what I’m doing doesn’t matter. Because it does. And that is something you could never understand.
(via nestingdean)
Also, fanfic is a collective noun, S.E. you fucking hack.
(via taraljc)
Okay it isn’t actually self-aggrandizing, it just feels that way because I hate blowing my own trumpet. BUT I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE COOL to do a meme where everyone looks through their fanfics and picks out the five best lines they’ve written and posts them with commentary! Does that sound good? I’ll start, as you may have guessed…
–
5. “I am not a solid creature,” said Grantaire. “I need many hands to mould me.”– Stone
God I miss Grantaire. I mean, you know, he hasn’t gone anywhere, but I miss him. I miss how everyone used to talk about him. This story was for a ficathon! And I actually had kind of a blast writing it, even though it deals with some extremely crappy stuff. I think I got Grantaire in-character, because he keeps saying seemingly meaningless-but-actually-meaningful stuff. Which is just the sort of thing I like to write!
4. “Many Of Them Were Killed. But I Can Say With Absolute Certainty That They Did Not Die.”
– Garnet to Mayor Dewey, Don’t Ruin It
With a gimmick (I mean that in a honestly adoring way) ripped off from Terry Pratchett, Garnet sums up my Thoughts On History. Also, I absolutely adore Don’t Ruin It, if only because “a Terry Pratchett-inspired Steven Universe/Les Miserables crossover that explores the relationships between Enjolras and Grantaire, Pearl and Rose, Pearl and Mayor Dewey, Mayor Dewey and his son, Garnet and Pearl, and humans and stories” is something that sounds nigh-on impossible to pull off. But I hope I did it.
3. “It’s very likely that this Amy was a prostitute,” said one of the men. – Amy
This line delights me on several levels, most of them sort of meta-y re: the treatment of women in art, be that art the paintings of Vincent van Gogh or the episodes of Doctor Who. Also that whole section of the story is I guess is a kind of – nod to? statement about? – the fact that Amy was indeed created by a man who has problematic views on women, but right now I’m creating her. I get to say what she is! Or perhaps she does? I would need a lot of time and effort to follow any of that through to its natural conclusion, but yeah. I like that line.
2. “We judge people by what they do, not by what was done to them.” – Amy Pond to Madame Kovarian, Things They Talked About In The Playground
dear GOD, TTTAITP. It’s still the fanfic I’m proudest of to this day. (its concept was, basically, ‘take all that icky stuff that happened to Amy during the pregnancy arc and actually RUN WITH IT, just like the writers didn’t’.) This is, um, a line. But a very very important one considering the fanfic’s subject matter. It shouldn’t have to be, mind.
1. I AM AFRAID OF WAR AND WEAPONS. I AM AFRAID OF THE LICH. AND I AM AFRAID OF YOU.
– Death (that Death? Sure) to Simon Petrikov, Humanity in the Abstract
Death from Adventure Time turns out to be the same Death from Discworld (it’s vaguely explained, don’t worry) and he pays Simon Petrikov a visit. They have a discussion about life, death, mental illness, Marcy and monsters, and then this line happens. It is important to me for Reasons. Hey, maybe they could be your Reasons too!
–
If you’re a fanfic writer and you want to do this, you should totally do it!
OMG IT’S FINALLY DONE
My contribution for R Ship Week. Curiously, it also could be a contribution for Underappreciated Ladies week too! DOUBLE THE FUN (although not for any of the characters in this.)
Anyway:
Title: Stone
Rating: NC-17, probably
Fandom: Les Miserables (bookverse)
Pairing: Grantaire/Matelote
Notes: Most of the stuff about Medusa’s place in Greek mythology came from a really interesting Tumblr post which I have promptly lost.
Summary: In which Matelote attempts to smash the patriarchy, and then she and Grantaire invent the concept of the awkward one-night-stand several decades too early.
Title: Masquerade
Author: sarah531
Rating: R
Characters: Harry Osborn, Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson
Warnings: Some non-con kissing, homophobia from various characters- and some quite dark stuff going on really, although most of it is just implied
Summary: It’s prom night. Someone spikes the punch.
Rose/Mels fic. Finally finished. Called ‘What That Does To A Girl’. Eeee!