Y-You too

I got a comment yesterday and I'm struggling to figure out what the fuck.
Did Dreamwidth become self aware?
Did someone who writes a blog I've reviewed stumble on this blog?
Is this the big time?
I don't know let's read this shit.

So I'm trying to write this funny piece called "How 2 Rite Gud", which would be (in my brain) a mocking piece about how writers get good at writing.

Things like "Don't have friends" and "Be awkward" and "Loathe normal human interaction" and "Write so obsessively that you don't have the energy for anything else."

But it's been done a million times before and I'm having trouble making it sound original. Or making it sound funny without being just sardonic. (Is that the word I'm looking for???)

HOW DO I BE FUNNY, INTERNET?
I READ A THOUSAND DR. WHO/SHERLOCK CROSSOVER FANFICS AND I COULDN'T FIGURE IT OUT :_;

As I told Pat, it really sucks when what I want to say has been said a million times by people way smarter and funnier than me.

It's a subject I want to talk about, though. Being as I am in an Intro to Writing class, I get a lot of praise for my writing. (My teacher wants me to self-publish, but that's actually a whole SUPER BRAIN MELTY RANTY NOT WHEEE inducing thing for another post.) And a couple of them have asked me how I got so good at it.

I joke and say "I don't have a life. All I do is write and read." And that's largely true. Now I don't particularly WANT a "life" or at least the kind of life I want is....well, I don't know what I want. But something not particularly social.

I did tell them "practice." Lots and lots of practice. I've spent at least an hour everyday for the last 20 years writing.

Step 1: be older than 20.

That's a lot of hours. So I got better just by freaking doing it.

(That's the way people get good at anything, right?)

Real life is a lot like MMOs. Just pure grind.
If you can find the writing equivalent to killing vermin you'll be in your end game gear in no time.

So it's a really nice compliment when people say I have a talent. And I do write WELL, at least in the TYPES of writing I do. 

Why is compliment in italics?
I'm not even being a dick about this, either. I'm genuinely trying to figure out why you'd want to stress that word.
Say that out loud. It just makes you sound whiny.

Last night David and I got into the most ridiculous argument we've had yet. We argued about the definition of protagonist. For hours. It was very silly.

If only there was a device connected to a network of information that could maybe provide the definition of words.
Also maybe if the word broke down into old Greek words that had direct meanings.
Like I dunno maybe Protos and agonistes?
agonistes, meaning actor, and protos, meaning first in importance?
So the main fucking character?
Those words have accents on them, incidentally, but fuck that noise.

It started with my disparaging remark about the Final Fantasy series not having a female protagonist. (At least the main series.) David replied that since one can switch party members to sometimes move and control a female character that Final Fantasy 12 did, indeed, have one. 

Yeah you're right.
Final Fantasy has never had a female protagonist.
Not one. 
I'm not counting FF13 because that game doesn't exist.
FF6 had two so what the fuck do you want?
And I'm sure you're about to argue that was actually Locke's story but fuck you that's not true and you are provably wrong if you think it.

I argued that simply because one can play a female (and in the case of FF12, only peripherally) does not mean she's the main character.

He agreed that video games need stronger female characters and more female main characters. He just said that the Final Fantasy series were not one of them.

In the case of FF12, the main conflict that needs resolving is restoring a lost princess to the throne. But stories that hinge on the plight of a woman - as many video games and most of the FF series does - does not a female protagonist make. It simply makes them the conflict in which the male characters solve.  

"Terra was exactly what a maturing Final Fantasy series needed: a three-dimensional protagonist who is not a natural-born leader, but rather acquires compassion, focus and a genuine desire to make the world a better place as the game progresses."
Oh shit I'm sorry just reading words about stuff.

In the case of FF12, the main conflict that needs resolving is restoring a lost princess to the throne. But stories that hinge on the plight of a woman - as many video games and most of the FF series does - does not a female protagonist make. It simply makes them the conflict in which the male characters solve.

We argued about ensemble casts. We argued about whether or not large parties involve a protagonist at all. We argued about whether or not Luke was the protagonist in Star Wars, for Christ's sake. (He is and I was astounded that anyone would say differently.) We argued and argued and argued until finally both of us, irritated to no end, said "I'm tired of this. Let's talk about something else."

Well if you include the prequels as Star Wars (I don't but most people acknowledge they exist) then the protagonist of the 6 Star Wars movies is Darth Vader.
Which creates narrative issues all its own but whatever.
I mean Luke Skywalker wasn't even in the first two prequels and he's a baby in 3.
He's like a dumbass kid in 4 who doesn't even do anything--
Obiwan is the one who battles Vader in 4 and rescues the Princess, really.
Luke is the hero in the last two.
He is the protagonist in the original three movies but if we're taking the six as a continuous narrative then he's only a serious player in two of them.
Anakin is a kid in the first prequel so--
really the first movie doesn't have a protagonist because the writing sucks too hard.
Look Star Wars is a really bad example.
My point is Terra and Celes are the protagonists of Final Fantasy 6 and Lightning is the protagonist of Final Fantasy 13 and you're a dumb bitch who doesn't know shit about video games.

I played through the scene that I'd been putting off in ME3, where one of the characters die. I'd thought it was a fixed point in time. Turns out, with some fancy footwork in the second game and being a complete, soulless bastard in the third game, you can have that character live. Others have to die, though.

No one cares about Mass Effect.

Everytime I go back far enough into my tags, I'm amazed at how I thought I knew things. I'm amazed at how much shit I thought I'd figured out. I totally hadn't. I hadn't and I didn't figure that out until just the last few years.

Now she's an expert and so worldly.
And an expert writer.
Who doesn't know "every time" is two words.
Maybe I'm being unfair and that's a typo.

Arrrgh. I just recognized a tense disagreement (like, time tenses) in my paper. The paper I JUST submitted to the teacher and cannot take back.

MASTER WRITER WHO SHOULD PUBLISH
CAN'T GET HER TENSES DOWN.
I know a lot of writers aren't grammarians and let the story go and have someone punch it up but I really don't get that.
This shit isn't open to debate. Grammar isn't the story. It's just the tool to tell the story. Get it right for fuck's sake.

I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to convey my stay at Desert Hills as a fucked up, mental-loonball teenager using cutesy kid pictures (since that's about all they have.)

Since she'd given us free reign to use as many paragraphs as we wanted, I wound up with 1 and 1/3 pages. (Double spaced.) I originally had 4 pages. (Double spaced.)

That much revision makes me weep. Okay, I don't actually cry, but being a journaler, it sucks in a big way to have to cut out so much description. I like describing things. It just feels and sounds right. And as a writer you rely on things sounding right. It's part of flow. It's part of developing and trusting your own writing voice.

Too bad you're just fucking jerking off.
Learn what vision means, Jesus.

It's just not that great for academia. (Which wants you to sound rote and mechanical because HELLO, smart people aren't all like "let's write human feeling stuff!)

Seriously, I just get so annoyed. My decades of writing experience turns out to be a disadvantage. It ACTUALLY, TOTALLY GETS IN THE WAY.

What the fuck did you expect?
Did your writing professor ever publish a book anyone has read?
Get your teaching license, be miserable, feed off the experience and then write.
This isn't rocket science.

The problem is how much detail to use. I mean, if I really wanted to, I could convey the entire paper in three sentences. "I experienced the hell that is physical restraint while in the juvenile system. For lots of kids that prompts PTSD flashbacks. You can sometimes avoid that if you learn the patients history."

But that's not enough detail. So I go in and add more and it's usually too much and so I have to cut some out. And then some of the other descriptions don't make any sense so I have to reword them. It's like "Can't I just write a story? Like, a REAL REAL story????"

Balancing acts suuuuuck.

Show, don't tell.
I mean seriously this is shit I tell 9th grade babies in creative writing classes.
Are you sure you're a master writer?
The reason high school kids are great to explain this shit to as opposed to cunts like you is if I said any of this shit you'd be offended but when a high school kid says "why do my characters seem so shit?" I can honestly tell them it's because they're 15 and they probably (hopefully) don't have a well rounded life experience yet and if they keep at it they'll get better but it's important to not be too discouraged now.
And they need to focus on that, really. Focus on being frustrated and impatient because you're 15. That's an emotion you'll convey later in life too and if you focus it now you can do it successfully in the future.

We did go over commas yesterday. I needed that. I feel as if I have a better grasp of where and when they need to be applied.

Well don't read my blog because I never use commas correctly.
I think you'll see I never have one misplaced, though. I just often omit them when they are needed.
Motherfuckers mess commas up a lot. If the dependent clause is first you need that shit. If the independent is first you can tell that comma to fuck off.
Also schools like to jerk off about conjunctions and commas but usually also unnecessary. If it's a long coordinating clause you need it but if the dependent clause is really short you just look like an asshole.
I think you find that's where this blog stretches the lack of a comma.

The class writing prompt today was "Tell me about a time when you solved a problem at work by yourself."

Motherfucker thought it'd be funny to blow my mining barge up in EVE Online.
He won't be making that mistake again.

David wants me to go with him while he sits his sister and her husband down to discuss the shambles of their marriage and how to properly communicate. Against all better judgement, I said I'd go.

This is going to turn out so badly. I am telling him this. I am telling him all the ways it will go badly. We are not marriage counselers. . But what the hell, it's at least going to be a spectacular train wreck.

I might not go. Probably wont, since it would be a mess. 

So you have the opportunity to observe human misery of that magnitude first hand and you're choosing not to?
This is why you will always be an awful writer.
All of the best creators tend not to be happy people.
I wouldn't describe them as all miserable but they're not happy-go-lucky, usually.
Why?
Because they know something that haunts them.
It could be anything, really. Something they saw and wish they hadn't but more generally I think it is the subtle and nagging perception that the creator is different from the people around him or that the world is off in some indescribable way.
Usually both.
And it is, like the movie The Matrix says, like a splinter in your brain that you cannot remove that drives you mad.
It's statements like that that make good writing. It's statements like that you can't just learn how to make. You have to experience shit to know what that's like to even think it.
 Anyway fuck blogs.