[ SECRET POST #2809 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2809 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #401.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. http://i.imgur.com/RU4NwXe.png

[a_potato]

Oh man, OP, I feel you. There's a writer in one of my fandoms who's one of the few people consistently putting out works for a particular pairing, and as a result, everyone is over the moon about her -- despite the fact that she's not very good. She's just filling a void. It's frustrating.

[(Anonymous)]

I often feel like the void filler in my fandom

[a_potato]

Aw man. Now I feel kinda bad, because you're totally needed, anon.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, don't feel bad. I'm perfectly okay with that. I know my writing and while I'll never stop trying to improve, I know it's not going to set the world on fire.

[(Anonymous)]

Anon, you are definitely needed. Not everyone can be an A+ writer straight off, it takes work. Keep trying to improve, and definitely don't get an attitude like the person OP is writing about, and you will be fine. :) You are definitely needed though.

[a_potato]

Given your self-awareness and drive to improve, you might very well set the world on fire some day. You never know. :)

[silvereriena]

Has her fic at least prompted more people in the fandom to write M/F ?

OP

[(Anonymous)]

It's hard to say whether anyone's been directly inspired to write because of her (no one has said so, but it's possible). She has caused more people to discuss M/F in general.

[(Anonymous)]

What's the fandom? You might find others around here that feel the same...

OP

[(Anonymous)]

don't want to say what fandom it is,because if I did, it would be obvious exactly who I meant.

[(Anonymous)]

While most of my fandoms are equal in regards of romance. I have one which is opposite of yours OP - lots of F/M and all slash or femme slash is ... rape (not even kidding).

We've had this one big, fic years ago and it was pretty well written but it made characters very OOC.

Maybe write about it in your fandom circles? More people might be motivated.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel your pain, OP.

There's a person in my fandom who's written a semi-popular story that she's always lording over everyone with because she has 'no ships' in it and she somehow feels superior for writing something with no shipping in it. She also vehemently hates shipping to the point where she sic'ed her husband on people to flame others in the fandom who wrote shipping fic. Not to mention that she commissioned a ton of fanart for her fic and then tried to make it look like it was 'given' to her.

I can't bring myself to read her story at all, ever. (I have tried.) Not just because she's a huge dick, but also because she's written the main character so OOC that I wonder if she played the same game as I did. But of course if you try to criticize anything about her story, her stans will come blindly to her defense.

I don't have any advice for you, but I definitely commiserate.

[(Anonymous)]

What fandom? Sounds horrible.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, that's bizarre.

I write mostly gen in a fandom that's mostly slash. It's not that I dislike slash or het (I read both), I just happen to enjoy writing gen. I don't pretend that it's morally superior to shipping or anything. But if I did, I'd be laughed out of town - and rightly so.

So add me to the commiseration queue :-P

[(Anonymous)]

Huh. Speaking of ego, if you hadn't included the "going on about how everyone is obsessed with her work" and "only good artists plz" request, I would have almost thought this secret was about my crappy fics. Mostly due to the "rare m/f" story.

[saku]

honestly i worry that my own writing comes off as pretentious because i have an extended vocabulary. i like to fall back on stream-of-consciousness writing a lot because it fits in many of my stories so the flow can be jarring or maybe even ambiguous and it's supposed to read like that, but idk. people seem to interpret it as pretentious, and honestly i'm not sure why? like i don't understand what's wrong with writing the way you know how, even if it might seem above, say, a young adult level.

[ketita]

Not commenting on your fics personally, because I haven't read them, but I don't think that extended vocabulary = pretentious. I read literature too, and stuff that's definitely not YA, and there is a serious difference between writing using vocabulary you're comfortable with (including high-level) and pretentious writing.
Sometimes I'll read something that just oozes smugness, like I can practically feel the author patting themselves on the back for a job well done. And that is annoying.
Have people actually told you your writing is pretentious?

[saku]

no, but i generally see people equating flowery or ~colourful quips with pretentiousness, so i've always been worried that might extend to me. i see it more as an artistic/creative process than a technical one so i've never seen "poetic" or "thesaurus-fuck"-like writing as being inherently pretentious, but then i guess i don't know what i'd consider pretentious through wordage alone. like, john green patting himself on the back because his female character kissed the guy instead of vice versa (as if that's a rarity) - that's what i'd consider pretentious, but that's less in writing and more in just... him as a person i guess.

there was one time someone commented like "oh yeah your writing doesn't seem pretentious at all :)" without any prompting on my end so i feel like it might have been sarcastic. but i write the way i do because i feel like it suits my stories and portrays the kind of mentality in my characters or the state of the situation that i'm trying to get across - maybe chaotic and surreal. i don't want my writing style or habits to be misinterpreted as something that's meant to serve a purpose beyond that. but i'm obviously not very good at figuring out what is and is not pretentious to other people, so i have no idea.

[ketita]

tbh, I think you're overthinking it. If nobody even complained, then what's your basis for thinking that your writing is pretentious? If you're writing the way that feels right to you, then great, keep going. If you're really worried, get a beta or two who has a style different from yours and see what they say, or look for concrit. That's if you really think it's worthwhile trying to change and see what happens.

I mean the thesaurus thing is when you read something and it looks like somebody had a party with a thesaurus because the fancy words aren't actually contributing anything to the text. They're fancy to be fancy.

[(Anonymous)]

If you have an extensive vocabulary but deploy it in a natural way, you probably aren't coming off as pretentious. I think the No. 1 mark of pretentious writing is that the big words are never quite the right words for the job--it's a dead giveaway that the writer is mining their thesaurus and that using those words isn't natural to them. Though I suppose there will always be people for whom the definition of obscure and pretentious is "any word I have to look up." (But don't you dare suggest that there's anything pretentious about their two-dollar words, or that they should dumb down their writing by using shorter and simpler ones!)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, this.

[beverlykatz]

Oh lord, I know the feeling. There's one particular fandom I'm in right now that doesn't have much fic, and what little there is, if it's not gen or character study drabble, is almost exclusively A/B or C/D shipping. I'm talking an INSANELY high portion here. I can count on one hand the number of fics there are of my preferred pairing [E/F] on AO3. One of them is really popular, and whenever I ask around for E/F fic recs, someone recommends that fic. I can't stand it, or anything else the author writes, but for some ungodly reason they're popular.

[(Anonymous)]

I just need to say: "meandering thesaurus-fuck" is the best description I've ever heard. Thank you, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

This person sounds awful. What gets to me especially is the "only good artists can draw me fanart" thing. Seriously? If someone is generous enough to give you free art, be gracious.