What time is it? IT'S TIME FOR JAX TO REPLY TO THINGS WHEN SHE PROBABLY DOESN'T HAVE TIME TO DO SO.
Also, as per usual, the member listing has been updated, but if I missed anyone, I'm an idiot who needs to be corrected.
That said!
So, in other words (TV Tropes to the rescue!),
Platonic Life Partners/
Heterosexual Life Partners? (If TV Tropes scares you, the basic gist of the definition is that it's a completely platonic relationship that's stronger and more important for the characters than any other relationship in their lives, including romance.)
Ooh, yes! I just wasn't sure if it'd be a kosher thing to call
actual relationships that. But pretty much both of those tropes in a nutshell, yep.
Because you're totally right. Close platonic relationships tend to be more meaningful, in part because they're not as heavily explored as romantic relationships... but mostly because they don't share those cues of hugging/kissing/what-have-you with romantic relationships. So when a person is close to someone on a platonic level, it ends up being conveyed in the tiniest details -- a significant look, a well-placed line of snark, subtle bits of body language, that kind of thing. And I think because it relies so much on getting every little detail just right, it ends up being a lot more powerful than a romantic relationship because whereas a romance might be a given (to the point where we only need to be told that two characters are doing it to understand), a reader ends up practically
feeling the dedication that two people in a platonic/heterosexual life partnership experience (because they have to put so much more into it to establish that they're that strongly connected).
Tl;dr, I think
bromance life partnership is gorgeous when done correctly.
On that note!
So I've got an idea: sort of a fun little thing to help sharpen everyone involved:
Post a little snippet, maybe a paragraph long. Perhaps its from an upcoming story or chapter of your latest work... and everyone else... picks it apart until it has no bones left. Leave no tiny error unnoticed!
I am totally okay with this, and if I wasn't currently working on a bunch of stuff I've promised not to publish (because they're gift fics), I'd be all over this.
Maybe when I finally pick AEM 32 back up, I'll do it, but in the meantime, feel free~!
I feel so shattered right now, I just finished a chapter and my mom turned off my computer (by accident) and I lost my 7-page chapter with TWO battle scenes ;_;
*pats* That's why they tell you to save and save often.
And a few answers on my end because I want to hit ALL THE TOPICS.
Did you ever write a story to tell a story, or to make a point about whatever, or both? How subtle were you? Did it go well, or did you slip?
TRUE STORY: My very first fic on Serebii was a crackfic meant to poke fun at shipping names back when acronyms were still a thing. However, its FFNet version did more hilariously than its Serebii version. And by that, I mean I might have scarred a few shippers for life.
I have also been known to screw around with shippings in general, and at least one fic was written purely to see what actually got reviews on FFNet.
And then there's Mary Sue Must Die.
On a serious note, I don't think I've ever really written a fic for
serious points. Most of my "let's write a fic with a message" shenanigans usually involve copious amounts of crack. Other than that, I generally tend to write just for the sake of telling a story, if only because I think it's more fun that way. Granted, I have a tendency to explore the **** out of goodness knows how many things, but I really only do it because it's fun to discuss, not so much because I want to teach people something or get a particular point across. I guess you could say it's pretty easy to tell when I am and am not actually writing for the sake of making a point. Because I'm usually pretty obvious about it. *nod*
How did you get an idea for a fic? Does it come to you? Or if you get inspired?
The usual. Listen to music. Watch something. Go for long walks. Read. Take a shower. Talk to the most hilarious people.
And sometimes, it's vodka and terrible life decisions.
...Wait, no.
What is your thoughts with 'tropes?'
Intrigued by the concept; hate the community. I agree with Dragonfree in that tropes aren't so much clichés, and the idea isn't to wake up and go, "I feel like inserting this trope in my writing!" A trope is just the name for a lot of common ideas and concepts to storytelling. They're not
just clichés in the same way a hawk isn't
just a falcon. After all, every story has a conflict, and hey!
Conflicts are tropes. In other words, all the people at TV Tropes are doing is doing what literary critics have done for centuries: give names to elements of a story. Just as critics have identified
quite a list of stock characters, the tropes community have identified the Five-Man Band and all its variations. To borrow a trope, that kind of thing is Older Than They Think.
Where it runs into trouble is, of course, the fact that a lot of people think of it backwards. Tropes aren't meant to be
consciously inserted into a work. They're just
there. By
trying to get a trope to show up in your work, you basically analyze your own writing... which might be fun to do, but no one's a worse literary critic for a piece than the writer themselves. Well, that and you really shouldn't
try to get a trope across in your work, if only because that's rather missing the point of the whole exercise. It's like Griff said on a level: it's not a natural way of going about doing things (in that it's actually literally backwards).
Don't get me wrong. I love reading the articles. It's just that I feel like the atmosphere encourages writers to cram tropes into their work consciously (because it's the in-thing to do), and the community itself can get pretty weirdly anal. Like, there are legit people who claim pages on that site and lord over them for some reason. On the one hand, it gets pretty funny, reading page histories sometimes. On the other, it can get pretty damn obnoxious if you're minding you're trying to mind your own business and have fun on the site.
But yeah, mostly, I'm a bit leery at the people who
try to invoke tropes in a serious or mostly-serious work. Just... yeah.
Does age really matter how well you write? How did you start out when you first started writing?
As others have said... *waves hand back and forth* Kinda sorta. On the one hand, obviously, you learn more and experience more as you age. On the other, I have also met people older than twenty who have produced some god-awful writing. (There was one involving a yeti, a horrible attempt at irreverent humor, a ****-ton of unnecessary political commentary, unintentional borderline racism, and an extreme fondness for comma splices and thesaurus abuse. I have never wanted to drink more than I did while reading that. Except for this
other time I read a fic involving Ash being transformed into a hermaphroditic half-Beedrill nymphomaniac, and
that was by someone who was at
least five years younger than the former writer. Or that
other time involving Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, and buttered toast, which I'm pretty sure was written by someone old enough to know better than that. Moral of the story: Sexual frustration and a dedication to writing
do not mix.)
Point is, in theory, it should. In practice... not so much. That's either a fortunate or unfortunate thing. I've
also had the pleasure of reading some pretty awesome fics by people who were only thirteen at the time of writing them, just as I've read some "OH GOD WHY" fics by people my age or older. In a way, you could probably take this as encouragement because it means
everyone has the potential to write... buuuuut of course it also means everyone has the potential to be a horrendous writer too. So that's really why it's best to look at authors on a case-by-case basis -- and if you're an author, that just means you don't have to be restricted by what you learn in school. (Meaning start reading online guides and whatnot. *nods*)
As for yours truly, I technically started writing way back when I was a kid. I was always screwing around with paper and things that can write on them; I just didn't always come up with things that're coherent or... even worthy of mentioning ever again. When I first started
posting fic, however, I was pretty horrible at it. Like, I wrote a genuine fic, and people thought it was crack. And I think I'll let my angst-ridden, description-happy, slow-as-eff fics from the early aughts
speak for themselves. Feeeeel free to do the math there.
*trots off to bed because
why am I still up*
