Sigh

[alex_beecroft]

Am I going off the Age of Sail altogether?  Or is it just 'Secrets' which isn't very interesting?  I can't really tell.  Trying to write a big battle between a bomb ketch which has already used up all its bombs, and a xebec, while escalating some sexual tension between her Captain and Lieutenant shouldn't be this difficult, surely?  I just don't seem to have had any enthusiasm for it since I got back from the holidays, and I'm fully convinced that it shows in the writing.

Comments

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

It is hard, isn't it? There has been a sudden sea change from the buoyant, happy atmosphere and fics in the fandom as it used to be - where every character was assumed to be a good person really, and they were all friends with each other (or respectful enemies who nevertheless enjoyed each other's company), to now, when it's all torture and regrets, misery and vengence and so forth. It certainly isn't the fandom it used to be.

I'm almost afraid to send you Secrets now, though, as I'm up to the bit in Mahon where they have their terrible quarrel and parting of the ways. At least you know it'll turn out OK in the end :)

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Oh no, ! This was not what I meant ! When I say that I cannot stand any more angst and misery, I mean it in specific reference to the POTC fandom.

LOL, it seems I entirely failed to convey my meaning that - summarized in the simplest and plainest words is: Ideeply regret that the sequels have made me unable to enjoy and appreciate in fics what I usually enjoy and appreciate in non fandom-related novels. As far as POTC is concerned, there has been so much death, pain, humiliation, disappointment of hopes, and breaking of characters, that I crave for some happy, light story where Norrington is still the gentleman, the Navy is still the Navy, and Port Royal a fantasy place and not the shadowed door of Mordor. The fandom as it is now is a place where my Admiral Rodney would have never tasted his seaweed pie and Fort Charles could never have a secret garden for my James and my Andrew to kiss. But my objections to sadness are specifically limited to the fandom.

John and Alfie are original characters, and I've no biases against their universe nor specific expectations or personal assumptions about their behaviours and personalities. They're a wrapped up gift I enjoy unfolding and discovering. So, send the new chapters by no means ! There is nothing I could appreciate and enjoy more. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was worried that the connection of Secrets with the fandom might make it something which went by fandom rules. And besides which, if you're not feeling in the mood for angst, then any angst at all might be depressing! But I'm glad to hear that's not the case :)

It is a great shame that PotC fandom as we knew it is no more, and that the people who might have been attracted to it in the CotBP days are now heading for Hornblower or M&C. I looked on despatches this week and couldn't see a story I wanted to read apart from one I had already read (though there were lots of lovely icons!) But I think that means there's all the more need for your fic, to remind people that that possibility is still there, if they want to seize it.

I'll send John and Alfie along then, which will be good as they're feeling a bit neglected this week while I edit Captain's Surrender :)

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the mail ! Tomorrow I'm on a morning shift at the hospital and Secrets will be a wondrful company. :)

About angst, you know, the problem it's not angst in itself, but the fact that at present angst seems to me a bit overrated in the POTC fandom. In medio stat virtus, the Romans said, and what I liked more of this fandom was its appreciation of joy and life, the ability of the characters to retain a smile and be themselves even in the worst situation. But fandom goes by fads and now it's the turn of anguish, misery, death, sorrow, and despair. Were they balanced by an equal amount of happiness, hope, and comfort, and the certainty that, in the end, all good things will be restored to their right places, I could stand it. But the paradise is lost forever, the old world has disapeared, and it seems as if the characters I loved most have all been deemed to meaningless torture and sorrow. They've been torn away from their sunny, light-hearted, optimistic world and plunged into hell. All I see are downfalls, and downfalls that can have no redemption because there was no sin. Punishments that fill me with pain and fear, because there is no reason for them, just the horror of a meaningless, undeserved sufference. That's the sequels' phylosophy, but surely it's not mine.
Which means I will just read less fics and focus more on writing my own story. And, of course, read and enjoy good, well-balanced novels, like yours, where in every line I read I fell there is love for the characters, a meaning in life, and some light even in the darkest night. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about fandom going through fads. And I suspect that there's an element of mourning and working through of anger and other issues going on with the fic at the moment as people try to work out whether they can work with this material or not. I know when I was writing DMC based fic it seemed necessary in order for me to make sense out of what the films had done to my perception of the characters. I don't know that I could have gone straight to the position of rejecting the sequels - I had to see if I could fix them first. It was only when I realized that writing the fic was making me depressed that I realized it wasn't worth working with.

Anyway, that's all a long winded way of saying that perhaps, once people have done their descent into darkness, they will end up coming back up again into something more cheerful. I don't know.

But I couldn't agree more with the idea of you concentrating on finishing your own story. I've long since stopped thinking of you as a fandom writer or even a Gillington writer - you're just a splendid writer, who writes stories which are full of light and sensuality and beauty, and I always feel taken to a better place by your stories, so the compliment is mutual :) (Thank you!)

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Yes, You're right about this: I can perfectly see the mourning, coping, and fixing elements. It's a personal, absolutely legitimate choice and, as I will never tire to repeat, : a) there nothing wrong from a narrative or stylistic point of view; b) what I regret is not the fact that there is an angst fad but that the sequels have embittered and biased me so much as to make me unable to appreciate well-written fics exploring that issue. My loss, and I'm poorer for that.

I don't know, either. Just this morning I read a post in my f-list that made me think people have become very, very uneasy about fandom. If one, it confirms my idea that the sequels have created an unpleasant conflict between a writer's freedom to write what they want and the readers'expectations. It's all very sad and upsetting and even if I do not know what specifically happened, now I feel like if any word I may say when commenting a fic or just expressing a fandom opinion may end hurting someone - be they writers or other readers. Oh, how did it come that something intended to make us merry and friendly to each other became a source of tensions ? I really hope all this stops as soon as possible !

Thank you for the compliments. I just hope to live up to your opinion. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I didn't think you were saying that you thought there was anything wrong with angsty fics in themselves! Just that you didn't particularly want to read angsty fics in this fandom, because they brought all the discomfort and pain and loss of the sequels to mind. I think that's fair enough!

For my own part, I don't much like angsty fics of any kind :) I don't mind angst in a fic where I know there's going to be a happy ending and the angst was just temporary, but I don't like to read nihilistic stuff at all. Heh, what's the point? ;)

I presume that was joyful_molly's post? It certainly made me sigh with annoyance. I mean *why* do people feel the need to report other people's private comments to an author who was blissfully ignorant of them. As Molly says, no author can expect everyone to like their stuff all the time, the best you can hope for is not to have to stumble across the bad comments. Quite what people hope to achieve by drawing the author's attention to the bad comments, I don't know. Other than wank.

It does create a very paranoid atmosphere though. I don't know what can be done about that except to take a leaf out of veronica_rich's book and just say what you think + let others deal with it how they will. You aren't, after all, responsible for the way *they* react. Either that or give in to LJ's culture of niceness and never give your real opinion at all.

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

I'm glad and relieved to hear my meaning is clear. It's such an emotional, personal thing, that it's so difficult to explain how I feel about it without saying something that may inadvertently hurt or offend. ! :)

Yes, it was Molly's post. I'm very sorry she had her attention drawn to unpleasant comments about her work, tough I'm sure the people who did it, did it with the best intentions. But I'm also very sorry and upset for the precedent this creates: it brought me back bad memories of my personal fandom experiences with other people tracking my LJ comments.

Yes, veronica_rich's suggestions seems very wise and pragmatic and I will follow it. We cannot be liked by everyone, and not everything we do can always be approved of by those who like us. But this is not the end of the world. We can always do better next time. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose I can agree that the people who did it might have had the best intentions, but I'm sure that I was always told that you ought not to spread nasty gossip. (In other words, if someone comes to you and says 'have you seen x's hair, isn't it *dreadful*!', you don't then immediately go to x and say 'y was telling me how dreadful she thought your hair was.') It only provokes ill will and makes people unhappy, as well as undermining confidentiality. I think that this is exactly the same thing - so I have less sympathy for them than you do!

I'm beginning to understand how gossip got the reputation that it did for being a very bad thing!

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Full agreement about that. Gossip never produces anyhing good. Whatever the level. Whatever the issue. I should have framed better my sentence and specified that good intentions do not absolve a person for doing a thing that has foreseeable unpleasant results (and no actual advantage).

Undermining confidentiality: that's it. Of course, when I post my opinion about something, I must take responsibility for it. But all things must be contestualized, or - especially in internet land - we can end fighting to death for a missing comma in a sentence.

I think I found the post in question and, all in all, it was an opinion someone with a specific fandom position was sharing with similar-minded persons in her/his LJ. It was clearly a distress-induced rant, and no names were specifically mentioned in the original post, so it was clearly intended for a specific group of people. Opinions are free, I suppose. As well as the right to share them with persons who agree with you. if they are not directly forced upon me, why should I care ?

I think all depends on how we intepret the use of LJ. If we think of it as a newspaper or any other mass media intended to reach great number of persons and to influence public opinion at large, then, of course, the type of opinions we post has a specific weight and every word we post must be carefully chosen. However, if we think of LJ - literally - as a personal journal we use to share our musings with persons having the same interests, then I suppose we should be entitled to a bit of looseness for our less popular, worse worded, written-on the-spurt-of distress opinions.
Personally, I believe that LJ would end being hell, and we all should make our LJ friends-only, if every time we express an opinion we are made a public target for all the internet surfers who disagree with us. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I'd quite like to read the post that started it all, if you could point me in that direction :) I promise not to comment or to otherwise get involved, it's just that my curiosity is aroused now!

But I agree that many of the problems of LJ come from the fact that you naturally think that you're speaking to your friends when you post something, and yet, unless you've friends locked the post, anyone can see it. You rely on your anonymity and the fact that there are hundreds of LJs out there, with no good reason for a stranger to come along and suddenly read yours - and you get to think that as a result it's a private sort of place. But it isn't.

If you wanted to be really careful, you could friends lock anything remotely controversial - but that would frustrate the other purpose of LJ, which is to meet like minded people. You're never going to make new friends if all your posts are friends locked.

So it does depend on the individual LJ user to ask themselves 'does this look like a public post, or does it look like a private rant?' and to behave appropriately. Which is easier said than done, of course! :)

On that level I suppose I can understand and sympathize with the people who thought the post was a public attack on Molly, and were giving her the opportunity to reply.

How complicated this socializing thing is! No wonder I'm an introvert :)

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Sorry for writing in installments, but yesterday evening, while I was replying, I was called in the ward for an emergency and, when I was able to come back to my office, it was past 8.00 PM - time to go home (finally *g*).

I don't mind angst in a fic where I know there's going to be a happy ending and the angst was just temporary, but I don't like to read nihilistic stuff at all.
My same position, as far as original novels are concerned and I've no fandom-bias. If the angst is really functional to the character development, if I learn to love the characters observing how they face distress, if, at the end of the story, they're the better for it (their sufferences smooth unpleasant edges or allow them to achieve the goal of their life) then I do not mind angst too much, either. It's just a narrative element, and as such I value and judge it.

In fanfiction, however, things have become very complicated for me. Fan angst, at present, is usually DMC/AWE related angst, and, as you well know, I have a very critical position against the trasformation undergone by the characters in the sequels. If you remember our past conversations about this issue, you will also remember that I do not see a logic and a continuity between CotBP and the following films. In particular, I believe that Norrington breaking was gratuitous and the interaction Navy/EITC as presented in the films is too preposterous for me to find a meaning in it. From this, it unavoidably follows that any angst based on canon from the sequels seems to me, most of the times, uncomprehensible and painful - just as watching DMC was, just as it was painful to read the few AWE spoilers I had the strength to stomach - and no amount of good writing can reconciliate me with assumptions I not only dislike but strongly question.

As I wrote some time ago in a post you maybe remember, my opinion is that, when canon fails us and we're forced to put too many broken pieces together, then, in fixing things for ourselves, we can end breaking them for someone other. And this, sadly, it's what most of the fixings do to me. They further break my poor characters and make me love them less. Not because the fics are bad, or badly written. But because they operate the fixing incorporating material I thoroughly dislike. And if I dislike the flavour of garlic, putting it into a meat dish instead of a pasta sauce, sadly, does not change things for me: the chef can be the best in the world, but I still cannot eat. Nobody's fault, except mine, of course. It's me the one who does not like garlic. But this is like things stand.

Paradoxically as it may seem, the only DMC/AWE fixing that might work for me is a story where the writer demonstrates that nothing included in the sequels really happened, but it was only a twisted report - a piratical legend born from a night of booze in some Tortuga tavern. But this, I suppose, would be not fixing at all for most of the other persons ! :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's a good point! A DMC or AWE fic which was so good that it ended up convincing you that Norrington *could* have ended up like that, or that the new direction of the sequels was a worthwhile one, would almost be worse than a bad DMC or AWE fic. In reconciling CotBP Norrington with DMC Norrington it would inevitably darken CotBP Norrington and prove that he was all along a less admirable person than he seemed to be in that film. And that's not something a fan of CotBP Norrington could reasonably want to happen. I hadn't really thought of it like that.

As such it must be hard to dare to read any post DMC stories at all, and the best ones will be the ones you can least risk. That's a hard position to be in!

I do, however, think that DMC and AWE lend themselves to the 'and then he woke up and realized it was all just a dream' treatment, because they have the feel of nightmares as it is. It's as though they are the nightmares James had after fighting the undead pirates in CotBP, when he's worrying about the court martial and he dreams about all his worst fears coming true. But fortunately when he wakes up he finds that Governor Swann has been pulling strings and has informed the Admiralty that he instructed James to let Jack go because Jack was secretly a spy in the Governor's pay - and James is cleared and everything goes back to normal. I could live with that!

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

This is not the actual reply of course - that will follow in the next days ^_^.
In the meantime, thank you for understanding my position (which is very hard and unpleasant, indeed, and exactly for the reason you mentioned).

But I thought you will be glad to know that the exposition to the gentleman in your icons is working: I'm starting to find him very interesting ;)
BTW, the face seems familiar, but I cannot place a name on him and the film. A bit of help, please ?

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

LOL! Hurray! I'm glad you're liking the look of the new icons :) This is the actor I've found who looks closest to how I imagine John Cavendish looking, though John is blond, not ginger.

It's quite embarrassing really, because this is the fellow who played Bingley in the 2005 P&P film, so he spends most of the film looking utterly ridiculous. But when he stops pulling silly faces he's actually quite good looking - and John, of course, never pulls silly faces ;)

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

LOL ! What a shame ! And to think that just a few days ago I was watching the second episode of P&P !
I could virtuosuly claim I was totally absorbed on following the English dialogues, but I fear the naked truth is I was probably too focused on Mr Darcy's dance-style ! :D

But yes, I agree he has very pleasant features when he does not make puppy eyes at Miss Bennet. ;) He will do a great Mr Cavendish.

*note to self: re-read the first wonderful chapters of Secrets with an eye to the above mentioned gentleman*

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it's worse than it would be if he was the Bingley from the TV series! This is the guy from the film with Kiera Knightley, who was *worse*. He made the Bingley of the TV series look positively restrained. I had about three seconds of footage where he's looking unhappy, and as a result is transformed into a good looking young man, to use for icons. But that's good, because it makes it easier to seperate the face from the role and use it for my own purposes :)

I suspect that it's all but impossible to tell *what* John looks like, just from the writing. It just helps me to feel he's more real if I have a face to put to the name.

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

It seems I'm fllooding you today. But I've spent the day analyzing some data about an infamous plasma substance called homocysteine, which has been keeping me company since 2000, and I needed a refreshing break. So it's all your fault if your comments are the most stimulating for my homocysteine-oppressed mind. ;)

A DMC or AWE fic which was so good that it ended up convincing you that Norrington *could* have ended up like that, or that the new direction of the sequels was a worthwhile one, would almost be worse than a bad DMC or AWE fic. [cut] As such it must be hard to dare to read any post DMC stories at all, and the best ones will be the ones you can least risk. That's a hard position to be in!

That's it. That's just my problem. I hope you understand, now, why I cannot stand to hear the sequels named.

AWE and DMC had done me the worst of the offences: not only they've ruined my fav characters, but also made impossible for me to enjoy the fics of my fav fandom authors. A double damage with the adjunct of placing me in a most unpleasant position every time a sequel-compliant fic is posted in the naval fandom. Think of what I feel every time I must choose between just be silent (which, if I've a known story of reading and appreciating a specific author, can be erroneously constructed as a criticism against the writing) or be honest and openly say "sorry, the writing is marvellous, but this actually makes things even worse for me". I suppose no author - and even less an author who's offering a fixing-fic - would be particularly pleased to receive a comment like that. 0_0

Oh, I could too ! That's a very satysfying and soothing explanation. :) It wondefully worked in Fair Trade. And, you know, of course the epilogue of Conversation in Port Royal will offer my personal comic explanation for the DMC/AWE rumours. BTW, chapter 1 is finished, but before sending it for the beta, I'm waiting you end editing Captain's Surrender and take your well-deserved break. :)

[galadhir.livejournal.com]

It is very hard on you! But I don't think you need to worry about not commenting on DMC and AWE fic, because the people whose fic you comment on regularly enough to notice when you don't, already know you well enough to know why. I mean, I didn't expect you to comment on 'Foreclosure', because I knew that reading it would be a painful experience for you, and I was almost glad to be able to spare you from it :) I'm sure that Molly also understands - she's a very level headed person, and as she says herself, she wouldn't be writing Gillington (or even Gillette/OMC) at all if she was in it for the reviews :)

I think I probably agree that no review is preferrable to a review saying that you didn't enjoy it - for whatever reason :) It's hard to hear that, when your main objective is just to entertain! But it is hard on you to have to avoid fic by authors you have always enjoyed. Particularly when there's so little of it about!

I have finished the editing! And I bought myself the Silver Surfer film and the second series of Rome as a celebration, so go ahead and send me Chapter 1 :)

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much ! To save your time, I've answered you in my private mail along with other related matters. :)

Hope you enjoy your DVDs !