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aruanA dear friend of mine was dealt a grave injustice tonight, in the form of a Christmas present of all things. She had a very simple wish, something heartbreakingly endearing like the little boys who ask for socks from Santa. She wanted a story. About two boys and a third element. She wrote her own for someone else, a pairing that she herself wouldn't go out of her way to write, but did her absolute best to remain faithful to its integrity.
I understand about being new to the fandom. *waves hello* Been here barely five months, nice to meet you. I understand about wanting to become a part of it by participating in events and challenges. But Don We Now Our Gay Apparel was different from its inception, because the idea was that these were *gifts* for *other fans* for the holidays. You weren't writing for yourself - the creative masturbation was for an audience now, and the analogy works because the idea behind undertaking this task was the confidence not only that you could meet the requirements, which you wouldn't know until they were *assigned* to you, but that you could rise to the occasion to write something that can objectively be qualified as good. This was supposed to be meaningful and pleasing, and my friend ended up with a fic that was obviously unbetaed, and we're not just talking a few commas, whose tone was downright snide toward the pairing and resentful of the single other request she made regarding the story's content. My friend has been anticipating this with all due right, and she's now upset that she had any influence in the genesis of this story. This was a huge undertaking, and participation should've meant that the would-be author understood all the risks she ran by tossing her hat into the ring and felt competent enough not to write but to write *for someone else.*
If you've been keeping up, I had a bit of a crisis over the course of this past week. There was the inherently traumatic flat tire which resulted in my not getting back from Orlando International until 4 o'clock in the morning of the day my Literature paper was due, of which I had at that point 3/10ths written. There was the Literature paper, and the frantic, stress-filled, agonized three days I spent in no other pursuits but formulating it. Then there was the packing as I was being kicked out of house and home for the winter break, and the inexorable drive home, which concluded in my plopping down in front of the computer at 10 o'clock on Saturday night to do anything but want to tear at my hair for the first time pretty much since a week before that.
Then there was the quick and vexing death of DSL not half an hour into my attempting to catch up with real (lowercase 'r') life on Sunday night. It was not resusitated until later on Monday, but that didn't matter as I spent both days in also aforementioned pursuits - chained to my sofa with Douglas, frantically working on the Secret Santa challenge fic I had about 3/5ths done. I did, however, manage to read the first page of my mail before it kerplunked and discovered that I had received one from the admins stating that since I hadn't responded to their previous email (sent earlier that morning) in the given twelve-hour timeframe, my recipient had been reassigned to receive a story from someone else.
This e-mail was about twenty minutes old when I got to my account. I quickly fired off a brief response, reassuring them that I was in fact close to completion and would finish well before Christmas, if a little belatedly as far as the original deadline is concerned, but well before they're due to be posted. Then Webmail died. So, I locked myself up and wrote some more, finally sending them a message from no fewer than two e-mail accounts, with my story coded to Don We Now Our Gay Apparel specifications as in-message text, an attached .txt file, and as an .html document. They didn't accept it. The person they asked to write the replacement story couldn't have known about their task for more than half an hour, and it's not like any one of them hadn't already done her fair share for the challenge.
There's also another essay formulating in here about people who can just sit down at any time of day or night, and make it happen on the page. It's like, if they didn't have to go to work or take care of life things, they could just sit down and this stuff would flow out of them in an uninterrupted stream. The replacement story my recipient got was great, I do not contest, it's just that whoever wrote it did it in the span of about a day, whereas I bled, cried, agonized, and possibly got myself that much closer to that ulcer at 30 than I'd been before. But I loved every minute of it. I knew my recipient, kept her in mind every time I opened it or scribbled down a random thought in the middle of a class as this story took shape. It's still hers, so far as I'm concerned, but there's a whine about that 'principle' thing in there.
My friend deserved better.
I deserved consideration.
*deep sigh* So it goes. My friend, in her infinitely kind and giving spirit, wants to write me happy!JoLa and I couldn't possibly love her more but there it is. I'm already onto planning what I'd like to choose for my next challenge, because apparently that's the way to get me to write, but whatever else it's going to be it's going to have all kinds of comfort food [pairing of choice] because babe, you were wronged and that's just deserving of a redress of grievances, and since we're all still only human, I'll do what I can.
P.S. My own Secret Santa's story was epic and amazing. Joey and Lance, Christmas in New York, and the author spun introspective!Joey magic from that. It's also interesting that a lot of the same themes that I explored in mine came up here, and sometimes even in the same wording. Heh. Great minds, tralala.
"If all that was true and, really, the only part Joey got was the bit about the Ugly Duckling, then Rudolph should be Lance's favorite movie, not Joey's. Because Lance was the one who hadn't fit in, who'd been lost and unwanted. He was the one who'd stepped in for Jason at the last minute, who the Germans had tried to nix their record deal over, the supposed liability who didn't belong, except he did. He always had, and *NSYNC wouldn't be *NSYNC without Lance, who was proving everyone wrong now, who was the swan he'd always been destined to be, the leader of Santa's little team of reindeer, not a reject. Except maybe Lance didn't know that, given how hard he was struggling to overcome his perceived failure.
Maybe that was why Rudolph wasn't Lance's favorite. Maybe Lance was the only one who didn't know he was a swan."
-On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
I understand about being new to the fandom. *waves hello* Been here barely five months, nice to meet you. I understand about wanting to become a part of it by participating in events and challenges. But Don We Now Our Gay Apparel was different from its inception, because the idea was that these were *gifts* for *other fans* for the holidays. You weren't writing for yourself - the creative masturbation was for an audience now, and the analogy works because the idea behind undertaking this task was the confidence not only that you could meet the requirements, which you wouldn't know until they were *assigned* to you, but that you could rise to the occasion to write something that can objectively be qualified as good. This was supposed to be meaningful and pleasing, and my friend ended up with a fic that was obviously unbetaed, and we're not just talking a few commas, whose tone was downright snide toward the pairing and resentful of the single other request she made regarding the story's content. My friend has been anticipating this with all due right, and she's now upset that she had any influence in the genesis of this story. This was a huge undertaking, and participation should've meant that the would-be author understood all the risks she ran by tossing her hat into the ring and felt competent enough not to write but to write *for someone else.*
If you've been keeping up, I had a bit of a crisis over the course of this past week. There was the inherently traumatic flat tire which resulted in my not getting back from Orlando International until 4 o'clock in the morning of the day my Literature paper was due, of which I had at that point 3/10ths written. There was the Literature paper, and the frantic, stress-filled, agonized three days I spent in no other pursuits but formulating it. Then there was the packing as I was being kicked out of house and home for the winter break, and the inexorable drive home, which concluded in my plopping down in front of the computer at 10 o'clock on Saturday night to do anything but want to tear at my hair for the first time pretty much since a week before that.
Then there was the quick and vexing death of DSL not half an hour into my attempting to catch up with real (lowercase 'r') life on Sunday night. It was not resusitated until later on Monday, but that didn't matter as I spent both days in also aforementioned pursuits - chained to my sofa with Douglas, frantically working on the Secret Santa challenge fic I had about 3/5ths done. I did, however, manage to read the first page of my mail before it kerplunked and discovered that I had received one from the admins stating that since I hadn't responded to their previous email (sent earlier that morning) in the given twelve-hour timeframe, my recipient had been reassigned to receive a story from someone else.
This e-mail was about twenty minutes old when I got to my account. I quickly fired off a brief response, reassuring them that I was in fact close to completion and would finish well before Christmas, if a little belatedly as far as the original deadline is concerned, but well before they're due to be posted. Then Webmail died. So, I locked myself up and wrote some more, finally sending them a message from no fewer than two e-mail accounts, with my story coded to Don We Now Our Gay Apparel specifications as in-message text, an attached .txt file, and as an .html document. They didn't accept it. The person they asked to write the replacement story couldn't have known about their task for more than half an hour, and it's not like any one of them hadn't already done her fair share for the challenge.
There's also another essay formulating in here about people who can just sit down at any time of day or night, and make it happen on the page. It's like, if they didn't have to go to work or take care of life things, they could just sit down and this stuff would flow out of them in an uninterrupted stream. The replacement story my recipient got was great, I do not contest, it's just that whoever wrote it did it in the span of about a day, whereas I bled, cried, agonized, and possibly got myself that much closer to that ulcer at 30 than I'd been before. But I loved every minute of it. I knew my recipient, kept her in mind every time I opened it or scribbled down a random thought in the middle of a class as this story took shape. It's still hers, so far as I'm concerned, but there's a whine about that 'principle' thing in there.
My friend deserved better.
I deserved consideration.
*deep sigh* So it goes. My friend, in her infinitely kind and giving spirit, wants to write me happy!JoLa and I couldn't possibly love her more but there it is. I'm already onto planning what I'd like to choose for my next challenge, because apparently that's the way to get me to write, but whatever else it's going to be it's going to have all kinds of comfort food [pairing of choice] because babe, you were wronged and that's just deserving of a redress of grievances, and since we're all still only human, I'll do what I can.
P.S. My own Secret Santa's story was epic and amazing. Joey and Lance, Christmas in New York, and the author spun introspective!Joey magic from that. It's also interesting that a lot of the same themes that I explored in mine came up here, and sometimes even in the same wording. Heh. Great minds, tralala.
"If all that was true and, really, the only part Joey got was the bit about the Ugly Duckling, then Rudolph should be Lance's favorite movie, not Joey's. Because Lance was the one who hadn't fit in, who'd been lost and unwanted. He was the one who'd stepped in for Jason at the last minute, who the Germans had tried to nix their record deal over, the supposed liability who didn't belong, except he did. He always had, and *NSYNC wouldn't be *NSYNC without Lance, who was proving everyone wrong now, who was the swan he'd always been destined to be, the leader of Santa's little team of reindeer, not a reject. Except maybe Lance didn't know that, given how hard he was struggling to overcome his perceived failure.
Maybe that was why Rudolph wasn't Lance's favorite. Maybe Lance was the only one who didn't know he was a swan."
-On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
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no subject
Date: January 7th, 2003 06:41 am (UTC)And I commend you for having the stomach and patience to do so. I had to walk away and cuddle my puppy a few times to keep from exploding.
and I wanted to just commend you for keeping your cool.
If I had any hope of people listening (not that they necessarily did anyway) that was the way to do it, no matter how snooty I wanted to be. It's cool, because while playing nice may not come naturally, it's a learned skill to survive in civilized society.
I think it was unfair of people to jump on you.
:) That's all. I think it was, too, but I don't get rights once I say something that pushes buttons, apparently.
I totally agree with you on not joining a challenge if you've never written before or if you didn't have someone to read over what you wrote. I'd be too afraid of looking stupid, which is why I'd love to GET a story, but wouldn't want to ruin anyone's.
Sigh. The mechanics of the piece were such a tertiary issue, and yet that's what people chose to highlight about my comments on it. I almost regret ever bringing it up, but the fact of the matter is it's true, and nothing a halfway decent word processor let alone a beta reader wouldn't have caught. The story being mediocre is one thing, and happens quite often - I can show you about seven WIPs of just that flavor on my own hard drive. And I'm not saying you shouldn't have participated, just maybe made sure to have someone else there to help if you felt you needed it. Because (and I know you've read this over and over, but) we were writing for another person. That should've merited serious consideration before headfirst diving. I'll take my own risks on my own time, but no one else should have to be subjected to it.
Sure its the thought that counts, but, really, specially consideration should be made before you get involved with something this huge.
I'm so glad someone finally had the (metaphorical all around, but the expression works) balls to own up to that besides myself. Because people whine about not getting the story they wanted or whatever, well, had there been even the loosest criteria or a fortright statement of the mission and consequences of this challenge in particular, people would've considered what was at hand here. I think at least the author I mentioned got something she outright didn't want versus didn't prefer, and applied just enough effort to submit something and nothing more (and like I've said, in this case at least, something less). And that wasn't right or fair to the person on the other end. She shouldn't have been willing to take the risk if she didn't intend to do her best regardless. Other challenges are different, and I keep trying to get people to see the recipient element here.
what does YMMV mean?
Your Mileage May Vary. Basically, to each his own.