Kim (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
grammarwoman) wrote2010-03-05 11:46 pm
grammarwoman) wrote2010-03-05 11:46 pm
Getting crowded in my head
Here's the thing: like some/many/most of you, I've been telling myself stories in my head since I can remember, usually stories inserting me into the movies/books/TV shows I loved, or RPF where I got to interact with my objects of crushdom. I never even heard of fanfic until, huh, the mid-to-late 90s or so? Sometimes I feel decades behind all y'all, which is so ridiculous considering I've had an email account since 1990. (I am utterly and woefully ancient.)
Every so often, the characters take off and become people in their own right, with full-fledged backstories and futures and feelings, FFS. They stand around in my head like they're waiting for the literary bus, chatting at me the whole time. At what point can you point and say, here this was me, obviously committing an act of grievous self-insertion, but now, wait, she's all growed up and her own original personal character, really truly?
So I figured I'd take a look at the lot of them, and see what they had in common, and where they diverged, and what my id was trying to tell me in (barely) coded language.
The number one aspect they all share is that they are FIERCELY competent in their jobs and main abilities. The surrounding characters in their stories may not like them much, but everyone agrees that my girls, for lack of a better term, know their shit. And once I grew out of Mary Sue aspirations (somewhere between learning the term Mary Sue for the first time, and confirming for myself that whaddya know, conflict is more interesting), people frequently did not like my girls, and that this didn't automatically make anyone on either side a bad person (though I am still too inclined to make characters that I don't care for the Dislikers, who might work their way up to Toleraters).
Self, I said, you're kinda repeating yourself there. Well, Self said, you kept ignoring it, so I keep bringing it up.
It's shamefully true, then; I want the pats on the head, the acknowledgments that I know what the hell I'm doing. At the same time, I also want to NOT CARE SO FREAKING MUCH about everyone's opinions on the matter. It's my twinned literary (and personal) kink - the confidence about the skill, and the skill to back up the confidence.
I don't really know what to do with this revelation, other than concentrate and meditate on my innate awesomeness without backing down from it or burying it beneath self-deprecation, DAMMIT.
I have two stories with OCs in Stargate settings (as opposed to the "legit" WIPs of various fandoms fermenting in my docs directory) currently duking it out in my head for posting dibs (while the masses of other OC stories content themselves with being bedtime mantras suitable for running on the mental vid screen while my brain is winding down to sleep). One is a neurological linguist/computer/AI geek at the SGC, with a sekrit past connection to one Rodney McKay, assigned to Atlantis on a temp basis (the cherry on top is that it ends up McKay/Sheppard -- my OTPs will not die). The other is the problem child currently yelling the loudest: she's the newest cleaning lady for the Nielsen-Mitchell-Jackson household in the Mezzanine universe (if that means nothing to you, it's...an AU of an AU (did I go deep enough there?) where Cameron Mitchell of SG-1 has always been female, didn't re-up with the SG program after she crashed in the Antarctic saving the Earth from the Goa'uld, and joined forces with Jack O'Neill's clone. Just read it, OK?), and she has Issues, boy howdy.
I have the first part of the latter story just about all ready to go...but I'm so stupidly scared to post it. I'm so afraid that even with their past stated encouragement,synecdochic and ivorygates will look at the end result like a cat who's just deposited a messily killed rodent on an heirloom quilt. And then I have an eye-rolling reaction to my own stupid preciousness. And back and forth.
It's like I'm waiting for the authorities to issue an authorial bull saying "You have our permission to suck...but we hope you won't."
*Razzer-frazzer* head. Why couldn't you just be content with churning out the stories, and stop demanding that I set them free?
Every so often, the characters take off and become people in their own right, with full-fledged backstories and futures and feelings, FFS. They stand around in my head like they're waiting for the literary bus, chatting at me the whole time. At what point can you point and say, here this was me, obviously committing an act of grievous self-insertion, but now, wait, she's all growed up and her own original personal character, really truly?
So I figured I'd take a look at the lot of them, and see what they had in common, and where they diverged, and what my id was trying to tell me in (barely) coded language.
The number one aspect they all share is that they are FIERCELY competent in their jobs and main abilities. The surrounding characters in their stories may not like them much, but everyone agrees that my girls, for lack of a better term, know their shit. And once I grew out of Mary Sue aspirations (somewhere between learning the term Mary Sue for the first time, and confirming for myself that whaddya know, conflict is more interesting), people frequently did not like my girls, and that this didn't automatically make anyone on either side a bad person (though I am still too inclined to make characters that I don't care for the Dislikers, who might work their way up to Toleraters).
Self, I said, you're kinda repeating yourself there. Well, Self said, you kept ignoring it, so I keep bringing it up.
It's shamefully true, then; I want the pats on the head, the acknowledgments that I know what the hell I'm doing. At the same time, I also want to NOT CARE SO FREAKING MUCH about everyone's opinions on the matter. It's my twinned literary (and personal) kink - the confidence about the skill, and the skill to back up the confidence.
I don't really know what to do with this revelation, other than concentrate and meditate on my innate awesomeness without backing down from it or burying it beneath self-deprecation, DAMMIT.
I have two stories with OCs in Stargate settings (as opposed to the "legit" WIPs of various fandoms fermenting in my docs directory) currently duking it out in my head for posting dibs (while the masses of other OC stories content themselves with being bedtime mantras suitable for running on the mental vid screen while my brain is winding down to sleep). One is a neurological linguist/computer/AI geek at the SGC, with a sekrit past connection to one Rodney McKay, assigned to Atlantis on a temp basis (the cherry on top is that it ends up McKay/Sheppard -- my OTPs will not die). The other is the problem child currently yelling the loudest: she's the newest cleaning lady for the Nielsen-Mitchell-Jackson household in the Mezzanine universe (if that means nothing to you, it's...an AU of an AU (did I go deep enough there?) where Cameron Mitchell of SG-1 has always been female, didn't re-up with the SG program after she crashed in the Antarctic saving the Earth from the Goa'uld, and joined forces with Jack O'Neill's clone. Just read it, OK?), and she has Issues, boy howdy.
I have the first part of the latter story just about all ready to go...but I'm so stupidly scared to post it. I'm so afraid that even with their past stated encouragement,
synecdochic and ivorygates will look at the end result like a cat who's just deposited a messily killed rodent on an heirloom quilt. And then I have an eye-rolling reaction to my own stupid preciousness. And back and forth.It's like I'm waiting for the authorities to issue an authorial bull saying "You have our permission to suck...but we hope you won't."
*Razzer-frazzer* head. Why couldn't you just be content with churning out the stories, and stop demanding that I set them free?