thene | thene is an awful storyteller

thene is an awful storyteller

friday; I got over 1k in between midnight and 1.30am, went to sleep, and effectively never woke up again, though I did get so much done at work that I managed to talk my way out of having to come in on Saturday.
saturday; made cake. That was it. Exhausted & despondent, feared I would never write again ever.
sunday; wrote almost 3k. iirc, best day ever that hasn't involved an all-day drabble challenge.

BUT this is all out of whack now; last week the two actualfax WIPs were doing this nice alternating and proceeding at a similar pace thing and now I appear to have 3.5k of one of them, almost 6k of the other and oh my merry fuck 2k of new material for a fic I abandoned before I moved to GA almost four years ago and have absolutely no hope of ever finishing ever. I WAS PACKING MY OLD NOTEBOOKS AND I FLIPPED THROUGH ONE, I'M SORRY. :(

a) does one value one's progress in wordcount, in presentable fic units, in ideas hammered out/skills gained or whateverthefuck?
b) WHAT IS THE POINT, EVER. Well. Going by one writer's panel at Dragoncon, the usual age for first actualfax publication is 40 so anything up until then is just practice anyway. I feel even more regressive than normal though, being as I am looking at 6k of a terrible plotless ♠wreck that I have been wanting to happen since that furious evening of midsummer's day in 2001. (which later turned into the first time I stayed up all night, GCSEs bedamned, and I did have my shirt on backwards because it was chilly outside and I had nowhere else safe to read and laugh and get angry and wait for the sun to rise.)
c) will I ever stop being a terrible storyteller. The other WIP is threatening to have a plot, and I should maybe stop worrying about the main characters being ineffectual outside of their tendency to strike poses and have smooth conversations because this is Metal Gear. The reader-end catch is that it is going to totes revolve around a really, really wonderful character who no one cares about, seriously, doesn't even have their own Metal Gear wikia entry, nghhh if nothing else I hope I am going to make someone out there LOVE HER. Meanwhile back in the ♠wreck I am failing at coming up with anything more sophisticated than Alpine Mordor and kinda thinking that there is nothing inappropriate about playing out a plotless whumpfic riddled with LOTR injokes because seriously.

I should have known how this year was going to go.

I should have known how this year was going to go.

Maybe if I write enough of this shit I'll eventually hit daylight, idk.

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Hey, making cake is productive, don't hate.

a.) let's just say it can be any combination of the above;
b.) IDK WRITERS ARE ALL FUCKING NUTS ANYWAY, and I shall have to post some of my terrible plotless dreck from 2004, if it will make you feel better, it's lolarious;
c.) the way you put words together is unique and I like your storytelling, anyway. fwiw ;_;

that link, lolol what a crazy random happenstance and has it really been almost a year?

BUT THE CAKE IS ALL GONE NOW. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

meh, I am just pretty sure I am genuinely bad at constructing stories that aren't reliant on canon for their direction. I hate doing tedious plot moves and I'm just not very driven to tell stories; I write more to [explore emotions, ask questions, pick fights with canon, use pretty sentences I made up, ruin things forever]. Which, again, begs the question of how to ever measure progress, what is the point, why do I write if I'm so uninterested in storytelling, etc. I notice it especially in MGS fics, because canon has so much convoluted plot detail that I can just allude to bits of canon and rely on dramatic irony to tell the story for me 90% of the time.

As Goldfinger said, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and a third time is enemy action. :) but yes, it was the little hours of the new year and I was all 'ohhh now there's a nice start to the year.' AND THEN THERE WAS PORN.

WELL WHAT KIND OF CAKE WAS IT? IT IS IN THE NATURE OF CAKE TO DISAPPEAR, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT?

Well. what is your process like? Do you ever outline? Even so, there is a place in the world for rambly meta-heavy fics, you know. Sometimes, maybe the point isn't to tell a story, per se, but to put an idea into the world. I like your ideas and pretty sentences, jsyk.

THERE WERE CHOCOLATE CHIPS AND RASPBERRIES IN IT. WHY CAN'T I HAVE MY CAKE AND EAT IT, NOTHING IS FAIR.

Usually for a multichapter fic, I write everything I know is going on and THEN I make an outline that can be followed the rest of the way, ish. Sometimes rather than a proper outline it's a list of cool things that I want to put into the fic.

you ;____; I don't remember if I showed you this awful metafic, yay crossovers with a potential audience of zero, but sigh I kinda wish I could reuse the meta in something else, idk. :(

No, I had not seen that before! And that's exactly what I'm talking about; it's not conventional but that doesn't mean it's not good. (aaaaaaand speaking of crossovers with no audience. You're not the one in the middle of yet another multi chapter fic of a shitty aliens-invade-the-earth tv show and an rpf character, are you? I blame the show; if it weren't so shitty I wouldn't bother writing about it.)

WAIT WHAT ARE YOU SAYING YOU DIDN'T GET TO EAT ANY OF IT? :(

NO NO I ATE IT AND NOW I NO LONGER HAVE IT, THIS SEEMS UNFAIR.

thank you ;____; i just hope that one day I get to break that idea down into two user-friendly pieces, ie. a) an MGS fic about the perils of having only one nuclear warhead (this may even end up shoehorned into the MGS fic I was working on last week) and b) a dystopia fic about the Reagan-era nuclear politics in the LHM OH WHAT THE SHIT NO ONE CARES ABOUT THIS AND OF ALL THE GODAWFUL THINGS ABOUT CANON IT IS KINDA AN ODD ONE TO GET ALL PANTYTWISTED ABOUT, WHAT HAS MGS DONE TO ME. (I know there are dystopic HoV fic treatments out there and I keep meaning to read the one I've seen on AO3, wow do I get distracted easy.)

eee hahahaahaa no I am not! although I have been tempting Fly into writing alien invasion fic lately. Alien invasions make everything more fun. I find the whole concept of 'rpf character' interesting, too; writing about a persona rather than a person, etc. I still don't think I could do it myself; threading with RPF RPers is headtilty enough for me.

THEN MAKE MORE OBV.

ffff wow. Good luck with that. (I think I know which fic on AO3 you're talking about, and you should def. read it.)

OH GOD THIS FIC IS KILLING ME. KILLING ME. The really bizarre thing is, when I was writing his ~persona there was one specific thing I pulled out of my ass because it fit the story, and come to find out later it is TRUFAX. HEAD ASPLODE. I was thinking of different kinds of OCs to write about, because oh god do I not care about how priveleged wealthy white familes deal with an alien invasion. And then JW said OH HAI YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE A GREAT IDEA. ME BLOWING UP SOME GIANT SPIDERS FROM SPACE WITH A GODDAMN UZI. ;___; I almost just based an OC on him, but that killed my motivation. sigh.

That sounds like uncanny-valley territory. ;_; On the other hand at least JW seems like one of those celebs who it is easy to pretend is not a real person on improbability grounds. (Hideo Kojima is another; Fly RPs him sometimes. There is no way he is really real-world real, oh come on.)

ugh yeah, there are stories one could care harder about. I hope yours comes out good - if nothing else it sounds like you are having a lot of fun :)

my progress report; the stuff i referred to as 'buildup to hatesex' is now sitting in a file called 'chapter 1' which has over 5500 words in it and still has a giant gap between the bit I am working on and the last scene (which I've already written). AFAIK nothing is even happening in this chapter, it's just TONS OF WORDS. The hatesex is in a 'chapter 2' file that contains nearly another 2k. I have no idea, none, and I am probably doing something horribly wrong here in terms of emotional dynamics but aaaaghhh.

It is either a sign that I am either way too strike>obsessed emotionally invested in everything he says and does, or just pure luck, idk. We'll go with the latter because that is less creepy. And fuck, yes. You could not create a fictional character like him, jesus.

But I have to admit, the whole thing is pretty fun. It's dark, but then again I like tormenting pretty boys. I think I read too much HoV in my youth.

THENE I AM SURE IT IS NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK. ALSO, EEEEEEEEE SO EXCITE FOR THIS.

GIANT SPIDERS is original as torments for prettyboys go. I guess it depends on how arachnophobic you make them...

I am finally done with the first draft of the first chapter of it ;__; I need to go over it tomorrow because I am pretty sure it is a mass of adverb hell and failflow and it doesn't have a title yet, but oh. god. so. tired. Will share asap.

THERE WERE CHOCOLATE CHIPS AND RASPBERRIES IN IT.

Erm... recipe, pls?

This only I had frozen raspberries this time. It's really easy, too. I have decided I like making cake more than bikkits because you don't have to return to the oven every 10 minutes and then go through the process of laying out another tray of cake. I bought a bun tray for when I want to make little snacky things! I have never had one before, this is amazing. :)

(also, I added a little butter and a little icing sugar to the melted chocolate this time - makes it sweeter and it goes further).

a) I tell myself it's somewhere in whateverthefuck territory, because otherwise I might feel sad about the hundreds of thousands of oh-god-Idon't-even-want-to-post-this-anon words I've left lying around on backup CDs and now-dead hard drives over the years.

b) the usual age for first actualfax publication is 40 <-- This fascinates me! Ha ha, I remember being worried as a pre-teen that I would be a complete failure if I didn't publish a novel before I started applying to universities. IDEK.

c) Plot is where my orig fic always hits the wall, and why every NaNoWriMo I've ever won ends with my saying, "What? No, this is stupid," spacing down a few lines, and spitting out 20,000 aimless words of drunken banter and porn. But storytelling is frequently not what I love best or even remember about a piece of fiction (I've had a lot of conversations that go along the lines of "So what's it about?" "THAT'S NOT THE POINT"), so, well.

a) I have no shame but I'm also a low-volume writer - I can feel lucky if I get out over 50k in a year. The longest thing I ever finished was this year's FFEX fic, which was a little over 26k. I do not NaNo; wouldn't work for me and doesn't interest me.

b) yes! (The panel this got mentioned at was about getting short stories published and it had four people on it; the winnar among them first got published the day before her 40th birthday, two of the others were in their mid-40s and the fourth declined to say other than that she'd been much older than that). My sister was much like you in that regard and I have just never been interested in making novels at all, but I should probably be more enthusiastic about working on original short stories than I am, because when I do work on them I find all kinds of gaps in my skillset that need dealing with. Maybe because of growing up with Z around I've never even kind of thought about writing for money. I wanna be an accountant if I grow up, thanks.

c) I maintain dramatic irony is the best thing about fanfic. example: One of my supposedly better fics is an MGS pre-canon fic about the Joy and the Sorrow getting stuck in the Gobi Desert and thinking they're gonna die. I didn't need to ruin the mood by writing the part where their last-ditch rescue plan worked because they are still alive in canon. YAY AWESOME LESS WORK FOR ME.

I completely agree about storytelling not being the point. I guess that is how our brains work or something. HOWEVER, I do think that a writer has to entertain readers if they want to be read, and it's hard to do that without good storytelling outside of fandom (or porn, I guess).

a) Which is funny to me, because I am a slow writer and cannot imagine getting 26k out of myself during the FFEX timeline, so I am still a little in awe of your output for this round. :P

b) Oddly enough, I badly wanted to write for money when I was younger, but this appeals to me less and less the older I get. I think this is because I found a career I really like and writing has become what I do for fun, so the idea of dealing with publishers and deadlines and rejection letters leaves me cold.

c) Yesss, this is one of my favorite things about having a canon to work with. Also, ooh, thing to read! And a reminder that I really want to get around to playing more of the MGS games, as opposed to playing/watching bits of them and Wiki-browsing to connect the bits.

a) ME EITHER SERIOUSLY WTF I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED. WORDS CAME OUT?

b) aw. Doesn't help that most writing is shit money in terms of the time and effort it takes to produce. I would much rather have it as a hobby, thanks.

c) if it's any comfort there is literally no one in MGS fandom who has played every game. This has been proven. I know quite a few people who've only played MGS2 and MGS3. One of the most popular fics in the fandom is based on MGS Mobile, which is unemulatable abandonware and even the author of the fic has not played it. I once saw someone who was new to MGS say it was like a comic-book fandom - decades-worth of canon (AND RETCONS) that people float around in, take what they need & ignore the rest, etc. So there's something for everyone in the fandom! It would be lovely to see you around on

capslock_mgs,

mgs_fanworks,

mgs_slash and such.

(The wiki is a ball of fanboy suck, though. I seriously once got into an edit war there with someone who was lying about IRL history because they couldn't deal with the fact that Fox was a commie when he was like 11 years old. /face.palm.)

You tempt me with your freewheeling, comics-style MGS fandom. I haven't dusted off an LJ account in a long while, but I could certainly go poke around, especially in the joyous land of CAPSLOCK.

(Shame about the fanboy suck all over the wiki, though. At least trying to retcon IRL history is kind of hilarious.)

AND TRAGIC, I MEAN, HOW INSECURE DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO HAVE SUCH DEEP DENIAL OF A VIDEOGAME CHARACTER'S CHILDHOOD POLITICAL AFFILIATIONS? I AM CONFUSED.

What bits of canon do you know, btw?

BUT COMMUNISM IS SO SCARY IT OVERRIDES EVERYTHING~

I played/watched most of MGS1, about half of MGS2, and I sort of Internet-osmosed parts of MGS3. And I remember seeing Acid come out while I was in Japan and thinking that Kojima really is a glorious mad bastard. I also played the original Metal Gear, way back in the day.

:O Having played the original Metal Gear makes you officially hardxcore! I've only read over the script, and I watched M play most of Metal Gear 2, which is a huge step up in terms of interestingness largely due to Gray Fox being COMPLETELY FUCKNUTS and alternating between trying to kill Snake and giving him friendly anonymous tips & moral support over the radio. /ships so so hard

Ac!d is an offcanon (Solid Snake is the only canon character who's even in it) that wasn't authored by Kojima but wow do I love it. Every character has a double identity (at least one has three identities) and it is made of pure femslash; Alice/Minette are going to send me to the special hell~ Unfortunately it is annoying to play until you get hold of the sniper rifles, because most of the early-game cards SUCK. So I always feel bad reccing it too hard. I seriously couldn't bear to play more than one or two levels a day at first because it is so frustrating. But omg plot. ;__; It has almost no fandom and this makes me sad, so I am dragging half the cast into my batshit WIP in the hope of FORCING PEOPLE TO LOVE THEM.

Ha ha, the only reason I've played the original is that I was a voracious renter of NES games, and my local rental shop had a copy. I remember it being the kind of game I could beat only when I was a wee thing with lots of time and infinite patience for doing the same level over and over. Also, I think the NES release was somewhat different from the original MMX game? I should compare scripts.

You are kinda selling me on Ac!d, too, because pure femslash and I figured out a while ago that my Japanese PSP can play Region 1 games. Hmmmmm.

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