In Defense of Fan Fiction

My niece doesn't actually write fan fiction . . . yet.

 As a proudly nerdy girl, I'm into a lot of things that aren't generally considered cool. I collect comic books, read obsessively, and would rather stay home writing half the time than go to the bar with my friends. (Don't worry, I generally go and socialize anyway.) 

I'm also really into fan fiction. Don't cringe! It's not that bad. Don't you think you're overreacting a little bit? No? Well, let me explain why you're wrong.

Now, I realize that the term "fan fiction" can make even the nerdiest of people suppress a shudder. I've taken flack for being an FF (abbreviation for fan fiction) author from some of my closest friends. It's not entirely unwarranted, I can admit that much. I can attest to the fact that I've read my fair share of cringe-worthy, terribly written stories. There have been times that I've logged into Fanfiction.net only to sift through an hours worth of bland, unintelligent stories that leave me discouraged. 

But please, don't base your opinions of FF solely on those stories. While there are some pretty crappy stories out there, there are also some pretty amazing ones too. There are quite a few writers out there who have quite a talent for what they do. It's not all about people inserting themselves into fandoms so they can play out their fantasies of dating the hero. Some of us actually write the characters well, creating interesting stories that pull you in and leaving you wanting more when the story ends.

Fan fiction can also be a wonderful way of honing one's writing skills. When I first joined Fanfiction.net, I was sixteen years old. Description was my weakest ability when it came to writing and one of the first stories I wrote had so many plot holes in it that I eventually took it off and have since been rewriting it. (I'm referring to a work I titled, "Eyes of Purple" which was in the Chronicles of Narnia section. It's currently on hiatus, but I will get back to it eventually -- I promise!)

Since then my writing skill has improved immensely and I'm prouder of my recent stories (written in the Newsies section) than I have been of almost anything I've ever written before. As an aspiring author, I've learned so much about description, character development, and writing in general through experience than I have through any other avenue I've come across. I have so many stories to tell, rattling around in my brain, and it's great to have a way to express them.

I still write my own stuff on the side (even if my current story, "How the World Turns" seems to be taking over my life at this point). I don't plan on writing on FF for the rest of my life. I'd like to publish some books entirely my own in the future. But in the meantime, I love that I get to write to my heart's content and there are people who enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them.

So my point here is this: Don't write of fan fiction as one of those things that only creepy fangirls and horny fanboys read and write. There are some fantastic fan fiction writers out there who will probably be writing novels of their own in just a few short years. Don't count them out. They're pretty amazing. 

When, one day, I have published books of my own -- I hope there are kids out there writing fan fiction for it. There is always so much to be explored in each "universe" an author creates. There are always more adventures for the main characters to take. Don't limit yourself to just that one story, because there could be another out there that you like just as much or even more than the original. 

P.S.I guess this post isn't complete without me unashamedly pimping out my FanFiction profile, even though it's in the sidebar.

Just Being Me

So the story of my hair in recent weeks has been a rather obnoxious one. Just a month ago, my hair was black with a streak of purple in it and though I loved the colors on me, I wanted a change. Yes, I wanted all of my hair to be purple.

At the River Seine with my brother and sister

Being the smart kid I am, I decided I would go to the hair salon and ask them to make it as blonde as they could get it. I didn't want to tell them I was going to dye it purple when I got home because I thought the hair stylist would try to talk me out of it and I just wanted to do it my way.

The process was hell. I spent six hours in that salon getting my hair stripped and stripped again. 6 hours! That's a ridiculous amount of time to be stuck in a hair salon with a French stylist who laughs every time he looks at your hair and tells you, "No more black. Never again," as if I had chosen my previous hair color for the sheer purpose of making his job harder. Believe me, buddy, I wasn't enjoying myself any more than you were.

After those 6 excruciatingly long hours of torture, I walked away with coppery brown hair. Since I had been stupid enough not to tell him I wanted it purple (or better yet, bring the purple dye with me for him to put over the bleached hair for me), he had to put a color over it before sending me home. The lightest he could go without frying my hair worse was that ugly shade of brown that, though it did match my eyes, irritated the crap out of me for the next two and a half weeks while I waited for it to heal up enough for me to bleach it again.

Definitely not my favorite hair color. :/

After some intense conditioning, I decided my hair was ready and I bleached it yesterday morning with some product I bought at the grocery store the day before. It worked relatively well. Though I'll definitely have to learn to spread it more evenly next time. (That's what you get when you don't even have a color brush to work with.) I let it air dry afterward, not keen on damaging it further with blow-drying, even if it would make the dyeing process move faster.

Yikes! 

A few hours later, I pulled on the dyeing gloves once again, pulled out my purple hair color and went at it! I was terrified I would miss a few spots and, true to form, I did. But overall, it came out as nicely as I had hoped.

Think I got enough dye on my face?

So I'm now sporting purple hair, which I've been dreaming about doing for quite a while now. One of my best friends is always saying, "Everyone should dye their hair their favorite color at least once in their life." Well, my hair is now my favorite color and I have to say, I'm really loving it!

It's a tad brighter than this, but it'll get even lighter the more I wash it. :)
(Also, ignore the frizziness)

I'll have to go super easy on it for the next few days, but I can't tell you how excited I am that I finally had the nerve to dye my hair a "crazy" color. I love it!

On Snow & Criminal Justice

I went out to dinner with my brother and some friends tonight. There's a restaurant about twenty minutes away from where I live by Metro called "Breakfast in America" and one of my friends haunts it like the ghoul in the Weasley's attic. He knows every waiter/waitress and they all know him. It's a little scary, actually.

Anyway, it started snowing on our way out, first a little bit and then it was coming down pretty hard. It had  us all so enthralled that we legitimately were almost hit by a bus because we weren't paying attention to what we were doing.

Silvia was hopping up and down, so excited about the snow. I was less than enthusiastic.

I often claim that I hate snow, but I suppose that's not entirely true. I love the idea of snow. It's just so picturesque as it floats down from the sky. And walking through Paris at night, looking at the snow flurry lit by lampposts and light streaming from the store windows, you can't help but remark at how beautiful it is. It's like you stepped into a romantic movie and the love of your life is about to come sprinting around the  corner.

At the same time, though, this is coming from the girl who absolutely can't stand being cold. I'm not as bad as some people I know. I enjoy sliding around on the ice as much as the next person. And who can resist the appeal of nailing someone with a good-sized snowball to the face? Still, this is about the time of year that I'd much rather spend all hours of the day bundled up on the couch with a good book and a large mug of coffee.

I guess I'm doomed to to a love/hate relationship with snow. It will always be beautiful, but it comes at the price of my being more than a little uncomfortable.


In other news, I'm really enjoying my Introduction to Criminal Justice class. I have a strong feeling it's going to be what my Sociology course was last semester -- aka. my favorite class. I'm taking three classes this semester: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Introduction to the Humanities, and Composition & Rhetoric II. They're all going rather well and I'm enjoying each, but there's something about Criminal Justice that is inherently interesting to me.

Like who knew that "it is impossible to determine with accuracy the amount of crime [or delinquency] in any given jurisdiction at any particular time"? Or that, "A child under 7 years of age is considered a legal infant or of legal nonage. Thus, if a 6-year-old child picks up a shotgun and shoots his or her parent, the child is unlikely to be charged with a crime,"? It's all rather fascinating.

I suppose I just really enjoy understanding how the law works and how criminal justice is handled in America. I'm sure it will come in handy one day in my writing too. Who knows?

There wasn't really a point to this post, I guess. These are just two things I was pondering today and I thought it was about time I wrote on this blog again. So please excuse my rambling. My brain just works this way, I suppose.

Officially A Vlogger

*Edit 2/1/12*: I figured out how to edit the video on my computer and did so, then uploaded the edited version and deleted the original. So the new one is not as bad as I say below. Still, I could do with a bit more editing expertise. Haha.

So I decided to finally do what I've been whining about wanting to do for months now. I've started to vlog!

Being a huge fan of YouTube and following multiple vloggers, you eventually hit a point where every time you watch a new video by someone you've been following, you go, "Aw, that looks fun. I wish I could do something like that." I hit that point somewhere around May of last year and most of my friends can attest that, "Dude, I wish I had a vlog," has been uttered by yours truly almost daily since.

So I finally did it. I posted an "Introduction" vlog, which my brother has already picked apart. I'm definitely going to have to play around with editing, because the whole one-take-wonder thing is not going to work well for me.

Anyway, I've decided to make my vlogging a bit of a project, or at least that's what I'm calling it. I'm going to post a new one every Wednesday, basically going over what's happened in my week or just whatever I feel like talking about and go from there. I've committed to doing this for a period of about 6 months.

If you decide to watch it, that's awesome, but you'll likely have to bear with me the first few weeks. I'm still getting the hang of things and I am virtually clueless when it comes to video editing -- which means I really need to play around with that before I upload the next one.

Hopefully this will be a fun experience and by the end of it, I hope to have learned plenty from it. So here's the first vlog, if you'd like to watch it. Feel free to subscribe!

Less than Human

I'm currently reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It's a New York Times Bestseller and has recently had a movie adaptation of it hit the big screen. The fact that Emma Stone plays one of the leads had me interested before I even heard the premise of the story.

The premise, it turns out, is about civil rights in the early sixties, back when my parents were mere toddlers.  The book follows the story of three women, one white and two colored, dealing with the racial inequality of the day. It's a story about standing up for yourself and standing up for others. It's a story about racial discrimination that seems so long ago, but was really only a few short years ago.

I won't go into detail about the book. My review of the book will be up in a couple of days on my other blog, Booklist That. That's not what I really want to talk about.

Sitting back and reading this book, I can't help but feel aghast at what passed as acceptable behavior just fifty short years ago. That anyone would treat another human being with the kind of disrespect and condescending nature that was bestowed upon anyone who wasn't white is just disgusting. It legitimately makes me sick that this was considered appropriate.

I don't even know how to put into words how messed up that is.

This wasn't that long ago, though. This was less than a lifetime ago. Only five decades ago, people treated those with differently colored skin like they were nothing better than well-trained animals. Seriously?! I mean, what the hell is that? How can anyone look at that and think it's okay?

But the thing that pisses me off more than that is the fact that some people still think this way. Some people still call black people the "n" word behind their backs. Some people still keep their distance like they're going to get their wallet stolen. The fact that I have black friends that can't so much as stop for gas in certain Southern towns. It makes me want to vomit.

And don't even get me started on how racism has affected Hispanics in the States. It's like people were told to lay off the blacks, so they switched to the Mexicans -- making jokes about illegal immigration, indicating that they're less intelligent than someone with paler skin.

It's that kind of thing that makes me ashamed of being a Southerner.

People are different. That's a fact that people have to come to terms with sooner or later. Some people will have darker skin, some will have paler skin. Some will like loud music, some will only listen to instrumental. Some will have different political, religious, or philosophical point of views than yourself.

THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT OKAY TO ABUSE THEM OR TREAT THEM LIKE THEY ARE LESS THAN HUMAN. EVER.

It's never okay to treat someone like they are disgusting because they are different. The world isn't ever going to get any better until we learn that.

In the words of one of Michael Harmon's characters in his book, Brutal, "It's all the small things we accept that make this world such a crappy place."

So stop accepting it. When you see things like this, you have a responsibility to do something about it. You have a responsibility to change things.

A Quoted Love Affair

In my sophomore year of high school, I took a Creative Writing class where my teacher had us buy an index card case to collect quotes in. Whenever we heard or found a quote we particularly liked, we were to copy it down on an index card and keep it for later. I took to this project immediately and thus began my love affair with quotes.

Cheesy as it sounds, it really is a love affair. There's something about finding that inspirational few sentences, that beautiful turn of phrase, that captures something profound that just appeals to me. I still have that index card case. In fact, it's sitting right beside me, looking a tad worse for the wear, and filled to the brim with collected quotes that I like to thumb through every once in a while. And, every once in a while, it does come in handy.

One of my first assignments in Introduction to Humanities this week was to find a quote that you feel represents you. I immediately grabbed my case and chose the one my sister had found for me and posted on my Facebook page a few weeks ago. 

"I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of." -Joss Whedon

But there were quite a few runners-up that I was rather sad I couldn't post, so I've decided to post them here instead. Oh, the cleverness of me! (Anyone catch the Peter Pan reference there? No? Okay, moving on. . .) So here are a few more of my favorites:

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." -Erich Fromm

"Be yourself. Above all, let who your are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish." -John Jakes

"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." -Gilbert Highet

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." -G.K. Chesterton

"Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but there also be Hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain." -Terry Pratchett 

Writing Hindrances

There are two major things that hinder me as a writer. Honestly, there are probably more -- it varies from day to day -- but I'm here to discuss the top two.

First of all, we have distractions.

I'm very easily distracted. And in this day and age, there's more than enough distractions readily available to do the trick. From the internet to movies, from TV to books -- none are specifically bad for me except when they're keeping me from hitting the pavement on something I consider my passion and what I hope to do with my life.

I'm serious. Even as I was pondering writing about this topic for my blog post, I was scrolling through Pinterest for at least half an hour.

I guess I need to learn to sit down and set boundaries for myself. It's not like it's a punishment or anything. Telling a story that's been bouncing around in my head is one of the greatest joys I've had the privilege of experiencing. Spinning a tale is as much a pleasure as drinking coffee or eating a really good brownie.

(Trust me to make some kind of connection between writing and eating . . .)

Secondly, I have trouble getting frustrated with the fact that the story isn't always perfect when I first write it out. A huge part of writing is the editing, I know that, but I love it when the story just bleeds from my fingers on the first run. If I feel like it's not on par with some of my better work from the get go, I tend to lean toward giving up. It's stupid, but it's how my brain works.

It reminds me of my exploits in art class when I was in high school. I loved art and I was relatively good at it, but it was so frustrating to me that it wasn't worth the effort. I didn't want to do it if I couldn't make it perfect. I've always had trouble with stuff like that. It's my own brand of perfectionism, I suppose. It's a good thing I love writing as much as I do or I would have given up a long time ago.

Learning to let go would probably be my best advice for myself in this case. I need to give myself permission to suck sometimes. Editing can be as enjoyable as writing and can provide new opportunities to make the story loads better than it would have been if I'd just shotgunned it.

Well, now that I've got that covered, I suppose it's time to sit back and start working on that novel of mine. Maybe, if I work really hard, you might just be reading it in a year or two.