Alternative writings

I'm doing that this weekend! It will be awesome! My first weekend LARP. I'm so excited.

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oceans-heart.livejournal.com

What do you play at your yours? My current favorite is my magey druid, but I've been getting the longing to beat things with big two handed sticks. :)

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I'm fairly new to the game. I have an Artficer from a secret society. I can beat things with a two handed stick, but I haven't. Currently I have a fish I might be able to throw at people.

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Been there--when people write about your characters it's flattering, but when they get things wrong it's a little like nails on a chalkboard. Sometimes when they get very close but no cigar it's worse than when they're way off. When they put words in your characters' mouths that they wouldn't say, but you can't really quite pinpoint (in a way that makes sense) why they wouldn't use those words. I've had my stuff fanfic'd ummm only about half a dozen times, but it's definitely an experience. . . .

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It's very much like nails on the chalkboard. No, it's like nails on a chalkboard in a movie, because at least if it was just nails on a chalkboard you could get them to stop.

I think that's why I'm so fascinated by the fan fiction that might come up from my own writing. To see how other people interpret the characters I've created and live in my head. Even though I know it will be wrong, likely.

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I got fanfic'd by a guy who had only read a small portion of the work he was using, and I guess because I'm very short he assumed my character was short too and wrote a couple lines that made it seem like she was. (He had a character who was only maybe 5'5" looking "down" at her, or calling her "little girl," etc. Too bad she's almost six feet tall. Hello!) He also insinuated that there was a romantic involvement between her and another character, when that involvement is decidedly one-sided; he likes her, but she doesn't like him. His fanfic made it seem like she did indeed have buried feelings for him. It irritated me. A lot.

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I suppose that's why you're supposed to read the entire thing before writing the fan fic. Or at least a good part of it.

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Heh, well, this is a series of novels, which when combined are longer than Tolkien's LOTR stuff. (Even if you include The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.) But yeah, he could have at least read one of the books before fanfic-ing it, yeah? But he was just playing around, I guess. :D

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The place where the fanfic is posted has a bunch of footnotes from me pointing out where it isn't accurate. I'm a jerk.

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... I would so do that.

Do you have a link?

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Ah. Link to what? The fanfiction? (The thing he did fanfiction TO can't be read online 'cause it's a novel, though there are excerpts . . . since I wanna get it published someday, the only people who've read it are people who read it in electronic form.)

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Meaning they read the Word document on their computers or whatever.

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You said the fan fiction was posted somewhere, the ones with footnotes. Is that available for reading?

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Yupyup. The fanfiction that has been sent to me on my stuff has its own page on my site.

http://swankivy.com/writing/fiction/fan/fanfic.html

The top link goes to one fic sent to me about my webcomic, and it was really cute and amusing but the author had MMORPGs mentioned as a major thing in the story and my webcomic actually takes place quite a few years before there was an Internet. I found that kinda amusing. :D

The link under that, which says "Angus vs. Ivy," is the fic I was mentioning in particular. I think most or all of the items on the page have footnotes, though, and I "replied" to the fanfics in I think two cases, writing my own version of what I think would happen. (So technically two of the pieces on the fanfic page are not fanfiction since I wrote them.)

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Ivy!

*is the author of Dark Griffin*

*waves*

Remember me? I commented on a couple of your essays a year or so back when I was a teenager just starting out. I think I called myself Ana Beachcombe back then. Nowadays things are definitely looking up!

If you're interested in reading about a different take on the whole humans paired with mythical creatures thing, I'd be honoured to send you a copy of my novel.

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Glad things are looking up; always a good thing. As for being interested in a different take on humans/mythical creatures, that's definitely not my genre of choice, but it does have popular appeal with a lot of other fantasy readers (obviously). My reading list is already pretty long, but I do thank you for the offer.

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All right then.
I know you haven't had a good experience with that particular subgenre - neither have I. So I decided to have a crack at it myself and handle it in a way that I thought made more sense. So there's no telepathy or, in fact, any magic involved whatsoever. And the animal (griffin) isn't just reduced to a sidekick. In fact in many ways it's the more powerful one.

Anyway, I'll leave you be. It was nice to see you again.

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Yes, doing a new take on something that's been done to death other ways is a very positive thing. For some reason it's very rare for me to enjoy a book that involves, I dunno, animal-y things . . . it's hard to explain. I'm not a big fan of traditional fantasy or high fantasy in general, and it seems like there are a lot of romantic ideas floating around out there about humans bonding with animals or sentient mythical animal type things. Maybe I'm weird but there's something about that that's always kinda turned me off.

I've only written one fantasy novel that's, erm, sorta traditional, and that was my reinvention of Sleeping Beauty. The retold fairy tale has also been done to death, some would say, but I think I found a new way to do it, and I've definitely had readers express surprise that it's as original as it is while still being, by definition, derivative. (Ha ha on Paolini and his fans for claiming that "all" fantasy is kind of a rip-off of mythology and therefore they're allowed to be completely unoriginal.) The length of the stupid thing screwed up my chances of getting it picked up, though. I'm rewriting it as a trilogy, but it'll be a long time before that's ready.

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Oh yes, I remember seeing you talk about your Sleeping Beauty story. Retelling fairy tales seems to be in right now, a la Wicked.

I should qualify what I said earlier - when I said "novel" I meant "commercially published novel", not a manuscript. My career's really taken off over this year; I've got a three-book deal with HarperCollins here in Australia, and am about to sign another one with Ace fantasy in New York. Actually, the launch party for the first book is tomorrow! :D

I've always enjoyed animal stories, since I was a kid. But I've never liked dragon riders, no matter who wrote them. They just never made sense to me. So when I decided to write about griffins, I set out to write them in a way that made sense, and didn't rely on magic or any other kind of copout. It was great fun, and people really seem to like it!

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Nope, I didn't misunderstand you and think you meant a manuscript--I was on the same page. You told me the name you'd used before, and I have a good memory. . . .

I'm always a little surprised if I actually enjoy an animal-related story (like Watership Down--really liked it, but maybe because it was some odd mix of animals not acting like animals really but also not bein anthropomorphized). And yay for launch party!

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