Tamar Joshua Rowe ([personal profile] tj_rowe) wrote2006-05-30 12:32 pm

I might be on the brink of leaving fandom.

My New LJ will be [livejournal.com profile] tamar_rowe if I can wangle it.

For the past two days I've been debating with myself, because I'm not exactly sure who I am. I often give thanks for my awesome memory, and the fact that I am easily good at languages (Germanic ones, anyroad) - but it's like those things are just plugged in, not actually part of me.

Like my laptop. It's connected to the internet, and I've installed OpenOffice on it. But the internet and Writing programs are just plugins, enhancements that allow it to do things. That's kind of how I feel, like a circuitboard that isn't sure what it acually does when it isn't attatched to various high tech thingamabobs.

Part of this was sparked off by the 0 feedback on my yuri piece on LJ. Intellectually, I know that there are only five people who have the yuri comm friended, and therefore it is likely that only those five people (one of which is me, one of which has left the internet for a while, leaving three potential readers) will actually be interested in reading a yuri story, so I'm not going to get many comments, but... none? Not even an 'OMFG Kimiko is so OOC never write again u h0r!'? Heck, even that would mean that it was getting read, not passed over.

I suppose that I think myself more popular in fandom than I actually am. I like to hear about people enjoying my work - but whether that's altruism or my being a review whore bend on taing over the internet, I don't know.

I got three comments on ff.net, all from people that I'd been chatting to randomly on the forums there and had never read a yuri fic or ficlet before in their lives. I'm kind of like that too - anyone whose name I recognise, I'll read their fic, even if it's het or gen. That's actually how I fell into the ChaseOmi part of ff.net (haven't refriended the LJ comm, yet, though). I mean, there are limits to this. I don't generally read things in the transformers or FMA fandoms that some of my f-list are so prolific in. But genre, even uber-genre? Na, that won't stop me.

Or, y'know, the other explaination is that I'm a crappy writer and everyone is too polite t tell me. Honestly, I'd rather be told. Knowing a bad thing and being able to fix it (or in the case of Biology, try to fix it and then run away to Maths) is far better, and easier on the psyche, than wondering what exactly it is.

Half of you are all 'OMG exams!' at this point of the year, as well, and well, so am I, so that's an explaination that makes sense. I'm scrolling past a lot of RL stuff, myself.

The past five months of my life, I'm been very shut in. If I wasn't on the net contributing to fandom, reading stuff about fandom and thinking about fandom, I was in hard-core study mode, trying to get these four modules (two thirds of an A-Level, because I'm going for two in a year and a half) of Maths under my belt before exams. Now I'm not even in a lull, because I still have Mechanics and Biology (AS, to complete) and Chemistry and Physics to get under my belt before the onslaught of eight ASGCE and one AGCE modular exams.

I'm burning up. I've almost forgotten how to function outside of those two activities. I need a holiday, but even after the exams I have to (well, not have to, but I'll force myself to anyway) one-up the four maths modules this term with five next term* (but only three in the final term) if I want to attain an A Level in Furthur Maths (rather than just regular Maths). I'm also going to try to reteach myself German, because knowing that second language well might give me an edge if the York applicaion comes to an interview.

There is 'Center Parcs' on the 7th of July for a week, and I'm going to try to get myself onto the school Germany trip for the younger years so that I can say 'position of authority' (they need over-17s to sit by the Fire Exits while driving through France) on my uni app. I should be fun, if Ms Lewis lets me - I like the Rhine Valley very well.

*In addition to C3 and C4, which are needed for the regular AGCE, I'll be taking M3, M4, and FP1.


Now, this is probably the longest entry that I've written ever, so I'll LJ cut. You don't want to read it anyway.

[identity profile] zanderkatt.livejournal.com 2006-05-30 04:46 pm (UTC)(link)
The Rhine Valley *_* Never been, but I'd like to XD

I don't think you should feel too let down about the lack of reviews... It happens to me all the time, I post huge stories and get no/one review. I myself am rather bad at leaving reviews, and don't generally do it very often ^^; But I've been tracking the Xaiolin Yuri stuff and really enjoying it! It's HIGH time that something like that existed in this fandom.

I think the biggest problem is that yuri is something of a rarer taste. Even in the big fandoms that I used to belong to, with TONS of hawt female characters, there was very little following for any of the femmeslash pairings. If there was a way to somehow stir up a craze, and get LOTS of people interesting in reading girl/girl, there would of course be more people to review the stories XD

But I don't think you should give up! It's good writing, and a good idea.

[identity profile] tamerterra.livejournal.com 2006-05-30 05:22 pm (UTC)(link)
The place that we went to - two years ago, I think, might have been three - oh! it was gorgeous. When we were actually decending into it, we had no phone signal for about four hours, it was so thick with trees.

I was planning a fairly long, involved plot with lots of mindfuck and smut (XD) - I did the one-shot-capture to see if I could actually write the sort of thing I was after. And besides, if I end up not writing it, there's a taster out there.

Actually, I remember when there was a Katnappe/Kimiko at ff.net - it was called Rose Guns, and is probably gone now due to being a songfic. Actually, that was the very first girl/girl thing that I ever read.

Heh, I remember when I first discovered your journal. I think that you'd commented on one of the GBS chapters, I thought 'Hey, new name - let's check them out!'. So I went to your journal, saw all the ficlets and was all 'Wow!' and friended you. ^_^

The problem with yuri is that the slash community in general hides from the het-and-gen normal fic, and as fSlashers are generally part of the slash community rather than het&gen, they don't tend to put their work out in the het&gen spaces - where the inhabitants are more used to having girls in their romances. So less people actually realise that fSlash exists.

I shan't give up. I have original fiction too, and this yuri and a Jack/Chase on the go, so I shan't stop writing, nor disappear altogether. (Also there's that pesky challenge fic that I have to do by the end of June) I will try to separate myself a bit, though. Maths and fanfic should not be all that occupies a girl's mind. ^^;