so productive!

[kaigou]

Damn if I'm not this close to declaring Tetractys as incomplete for at least a month. Take a hiatus. I so loathe doing that - I keep telling myself, just six more chapters and it's done! - but this part upcoming will be the hardest to write. I don't like writing when my heart's not in it - that seems like gypping the folks who've hung in there, this long. And I do still plan to finish Contraries...just haven't been in an FmA mood.

If I see one more instance of wank from that damn fandom, I swear...well, shit. I don't know what I'll do. I was told recently that I'm a big name fan, but I guess my own stupidity got me into that one. I just wish I could put about sixteen miles between myself and that fandom. The idea that my name is now associated with it in any way just makes me...I dunno. Pity. I adore the series, really (though in some ways it's not really my sentimental favorite), but damn if the fans don't just...grrrr. And while I like hearing of new writers in a fandom, I really really wish some of those new writers were doing genfic. I'd settle for hetfic. I'd settle for yuri, even. I'm just tired of Elricest. And anyone who reads my posts regularly probably knows I'm one of the more egalitarian when it comes to 99.9% of any possible pairings between any possible characters - but incest doesn't float my boat. Not saying I'm going to diss any writers doing it. I just don't see reason to add to the pile when I'd rather spend time on giving attention to writers in less-popular pairings, or who are writing no pairings at all. But I'm also sick of two things - one, asking people to find me genfic or hetfic (and not getting any responses) and two, trying to contact those writers and getting nothing but radio silence. I never mean to be intimidating...

Really, I was much happier just writing, but I suppose it's too late for a low profile now, eh. Maybe I can broadcast premature news of my death, change my name, and start over. I'm just sick of complimenting someone and getting the rather odd reaction that they're startled I would compliment them, as if I'm some Very Important Person who has proven to be so benevolent as to take time out of my busy schedule to notice a peon. Okay, so it was surprising-funny the first few times, then it became annoying-funny, and now it's just plain annoying. And it's kind of an insult, too, I suppose, when you tell someone, "I never did this to become important in the fandom," and they express shock at the statement. Wait...you think I did?

No. I just thought I could add something to the fandom. Now I feel like I'm dragging around this massive weight that says I WRITE FOR GW AND FMA. FEAR ME. and it makes me want to cringe every time I send out an email.

Comments

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I'm just tired of Elricest.

Funny that, because the Elricest writers really are a minority in the fandom. I think you just had the bad luck to know quite a few of them personally.

You certainly aren't wrong about the wankiness of the fandom, but I really hope it doesn't drive you away. If all the mature people leave, it'll only get worse. [/emotional blackmail]

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Bad luck? No, I just seem to be a yaoi-magnet, perhaps. ;D

[ex-saraswath377.livejournal.com]

You're mirroring some of the complaints I've had recently. :) As to your last question I would say that FMA fandom is REAALLLY big. And the series is still ongoing. Proportionally you're always going to have a lot of annoying fans who cause wank, and the bigger the fandom, the more wankers. That's how I see it, anyway. But the reverse is that there's a bigger amount of good fic than in other fandoms.

Here's a couple people I've noted recently (all of these tend to post rarely if at all at comms):

zauberer_sirin mostly writes Royai but did write one Ross/Broche fic (which I've never seen before) and is about as good as me, for English not being her native language. ;_;

thedeadparrot has written some gen (Roy-centric) and otherwise a lot of good RoyHyu, which I don't think there's much of at Scimitar?

greywing also did the Hawkeye 12 themes and did a marvellous job with them; they're completely different in tone and content from mine.

There are still subsets of the fandom that are great, though. The Royai set tends to keep to itself (as in, most of them don't post at any of the big communities) and the people are very nice, I've found.

You did add something big and great to the fandom, and I'm thankful for it - if someone doesn't want to stumble through badfic, I send them straight to SS. In several of the other fandoms I hang around there's no equivalent. (Or goodfic at all, for that matter ^^;; ).

[ex-saraswath377.livejournal.com]

Bah, am out of sorts and screwed up in coding the lj user tags. You know what I mean, anyway. :)

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

What's RoyHyu? Roy/Hawkeye? Royai...I keep thinking Roy-love. I know I've seen that phrase before, but my brain is too dead to remember the meaning.

[ex-saraswath377.livejournal.com]

GAH. *dies* Apologies. This is a sign I've been surfing J-fandom websites more than I should be.

Royai is Roy/Hawkeye. RoyHyu is Roy/Hughes. (It's based on the Japanese spellings of the names.)

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Royai! Royai!

*shoves Inner Fanboy back into box*

Ahem.

[habibti.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. Goddess.

*reeling from anime lust*

*gleefully pondering the holidays*

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

CP's comment: now you just have to mail it.

>.<

Hmph. I don't get no respect. *sulks*

[habibti.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes, please mail it. Please, please, please, please.

Now what to get you for Christmas?

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

hrm...two round-trip tickets to Australia?

*looks hopeful*

[habibti.livejournal.com]

I was gonna go for a set of steak knives in a presentation box - wouldn't that be lovely?

bwahahahahahaha!!!!!!

[presser-kun.livejournal.com]

According to Webster's online, the term wank is British. Can also mean clever, the way hack can. So it's obvious to me that FMA fans (at least the ones plaguing you) are British closet cases who think you've led them into the sunlight, you FMA goddess, you.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Ha, no, wank usually refers to jerking off; the internet version is its own application and most definitely means something along the lines of mental masturbation. Yammering on just to hear yourself talk - or in this case, see yourself print?

No one's plaguing me with their wank - I'm not at the center of the storm and believe ME this is a good thing. I'm just tired of FmA being synonomous with wank, to the point that any mention to non-FmA fans does sometimes produce the reaction of "I really am not interested in such a wanky fandom," which is really rather amusing when I consider how often it's a Gundam Wing fan - the fandom MOTHER of all frickin' WANKS - who has declared such.

Or maybe we in GWing are just getting mellow with age...

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I think age does have a lot to do with it, to be honest. In Gundam Wing newbies come and go, but since it's been so long since the show was aired in Japan or even on CN, and there's no major new releases, there's no real draw. The newbies in GW have time to grow up, and the wankiest people mostly weed themselves out of the fandom.

But on serious consideration, I think there's also a difference between the two shows that makes for a difference in the fandom. Gundam Wing is a nice show, there's no doubt about it. You can really grow intrigued by the plotlines and come to really care about the characters. But at its heart it's not an emotional drama about the characters, it's about the messages and the politics and, of course, the mecha.

FMA is a show that really, really makes you care about the characters. It's a show that demands a high quota of emotional investment. And when the emotions turn on, the brain turns off. The high emotional charge, combined with the fact that it's very high quality, leads people (myself not excluded here) to get very passionate about it, at least for a short period of time.

It's also, despite the abundance of adult themes and dark spots, a show that's accessible to all sorts of ages, so you get fans from all over the board. (Something about GW seems to slant it towards the higher age brackets, or at least that's how it seemed to me -- for the longest time, I was the youngest person I knew in GW.)

So, yeah. I really mostly pin it on the fact that it's such an emotionally engaging show, which will bring in people who are thinking with their emotions and not their reason.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Well, the care about the characters in GW, and a few other anime I could name, consist of the care we add, not the care demanded by the writing. So I think you're pretty much dead-on in this case; FmA is written in such a way to provoke that care/affection. Makes us give a damn, and that has a great deal to do with the fact that the entire conflict is so emotionally laden.

but I like the mecha.