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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: December 26th, 2002 04:20 pm (UTC)I will have to agree.
Nice to see a kerfuffle (kerlfuffle? kerfluffle? weh?) end up being a quite amicable and intelligent discussion.
no subject
Date: December 26th, 2002 05:40 pm (UTC)And yes, this did end well I think, as I'm choosing to forgo dignifying the aforementioned wanking community with a response to their pettiness.
*skips off to do other, hopefully less controversial things*
no subject
Date: December 26th, 2002 09:06 pm (UTC)::uses the one I made for myself that same day:: :)
no subject
Date: December 27th, 2002 06:32 am (UTC)