Demosthenes

8027

...Let marinate for 6 hours, lightly seasoned with sage and a dash a tyme, serve hot. He seems to have choked to death on his own foot, but what I can't understand is why a contortionist would take this kind of bet in the first place... perhaps he was---

8019

I would still choose reading. Writing is more of a compulsion for me. Even if I gain absolutely no joy from it, I find myself still grinding on. And like I said before, I will *always* enjoy others' work more than my own. If you think about it, how much work can you produce in one lifetime? Certainly nothing compared to the sheer amount of of fiction out there at your fingertips that you can discover and will bring you endless delight.

Edit my profile, now why ever would I want to do that?

After all, human fat makes the best dynamite Don't taste me unless you want to spend the next five years dealing with the addiction. Oh, and I've got brown hair, darling.

Love Eddings. I've read all his work, but I prefer the Belgariad series to the Sparhawk spinoff. Have you read 'The Redemption of Althalus'? I'm currently reading book eleven of The Wheel of Time series -- Robert Jordan.

That gave me such an awesome fit of the chuckles!

I chose reading. Funny, but if I were to live out the rest of my life in a steel box with nothing but paper and pen, or books to read, I choose the books. Other people's work will always be able to transport me better than any of my own.

Macrosschick: 90% of the time I whole-heartedly approve of well written OOC's, because (as far as anime is concerned) 90% of the time the warped character is better than the origional. I'll use DBZ as the simplet example. DBZ was horribly written, with poor character development and nearly everything else, yet you can take the character outlines provided by DBZ and make some amazing fiction, well defined characters and a driving plot. Naruto, as another example, is (again 90% of the time) the MOST annoying pest of a character, and I myself wouldn't mind one bit if some of the OOC Naruto's I've read were adapted by the series' writers. Naruto's idiotic single-faceted personality is the only thing that kept me away from the Naruto fandome for years. Anywhooo... Favorite crack pairings.... Shikamaru/Kiba Sephiroth/Naruto (this hasn't been done yet, but I might get around to it some day)

This is not a topic for which I ask that you agree or disagree, as there is no taking sides on the topic of perception (as I stated before, hampster on a wheel). All that you can do is recognize the mechanics of perception, and use that information in whatever role suits you best (such as writing). I simply bring perception up as another element of literature. I offer good and evil only as the most convenient example of opposing perceptions.

"There is no truth: there is only you, and what you make the truth." Is this a sweeping universal standard? No. Largely in part because there are precious few of them to go around. But the underlying wisdom I took from this statement is that the world through your eyes is made up, held together, or torn apart by nothing more than the confines of your own perception. Perception is unquestionably among the most itegral and complicated aspects of our existance. One man's evil is another man's good, with the only speration being one's own perceptions. Yes, it can be argued that evil is evil, and good is good, because we cling so strongly to the idea of a supreme archetype seperating the two, but it's not about blurring the lines between good and evil, it's about the individual creature walking along the surface of a tiny planet and what he or she percieves to be that seperation. And, ladies and gentleman, an arguement aimed toward this statement can only be made because your perception either differs from my own, or is in allignment with what I have to say. Our perceptions are what govern us, and our free will is what allows us these differences in allignment to begin with. It is a principal that may allow an Islamic Fundamentalist to detonate himself on a passenger bus carrying 30 young woman to the nearby University, for no other reason than that some of those women failed to cover thier visage in public. That may be in direct contention with his religous beliefs, calling him to act upon what he percieves to be the appropriate and just course of action. His *beliefs*, which have been shaped and molded by his core perception of the world around him. I put this scenario forward as an example of two conflicting perceptions, perceptions which by nature are abstract, but also indistiquishable in respects to the conviction of the wielder of those beliefs. We may continue to debate whether something was right or wrong, what motives justify or excuse, or lessen any given action, but I tell you now that it's pointless to allow yourself to get excited over an arguement that clearly falls under the absolute jurisdiction of ones own perception. Because in the end all you have to look forward to is a sore throat. A question centering so keenly on perception is libal to take the shape of a hampster on a wheel. Some of the very best characters have been written evil, simply because the plot called for it. No further character development necessary, just gather 'round and watch the evil man do the evil things. Though there have been characters who were written beyond that stricture. For example, Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7. Sephiroth's transition from good to evil, from sane to mad, all happened while you were present, witnessing. Knowing why he was doing was he did after being such an honorable soldier made his action even more horrifiying, because you were forced to sympathize with him on a very personal level. What would you have done had you been in the same circumstance? It made him a more defined character, rather than using the time old 'I want power, I want acknowledgement, therefore I cast my lot with evil'. The main character of Elfen Lied was the same. (spoiler warning) She began as little more than a horrifying force of nature, and you felt a certain apprehension for anything near her for fear that she would tear it limb from limb. However, once you understood why she was the way she was, what she'd had to endure, you found yourself disgusted with the human race, not her. Somewhere deep inside you, where your barely whispered urges lie, you wanted her to hurt those people for what they did. Because if you had been shaped by the events of her life, you would have had little restraint in doing so. In this way, perception becomes a tool for us writers to add to our kit, and a potential lesson for the reader. For instance, I once wrote a short story about a man on a newly colonized planet who had been called by God to heal a sickness that had afflicted his people. Soon after the man began his work, he was attacked by one of his neighbors. Being a slight man, he had little chance to defend himself, and just before his neighbor killed him, an angel appeared, saving his life and killing the neighbor. "I will watch over you as you work," the angel said. More days passes, with more attacks from the very people the man struggled to save. His friends, his neighbors, even his family. The man was confused and in great pain because of this, yet the angel saved him each time, telling the man that they attacked him because the sickness drove them mad. Then one day another angel descended and fought a terrible battle with the man's protector. The man's guardian lost, and the victorious angel went to the body of the other and touched him regretfully, before approaching the man. The man was frightened and confused as the victorious angel approached, sword in hand, and asked the angel why he had done this evil thing. The angel's face appeared stricken, yet he did not speak. He merely reached out and touched the man, and with the touch the man was filled with instant understanding. None of this revelation for a cure had been God's work, it had been The Adversary's, and the devil had a servent to make sure that the man saved the colony with his cure. The result of the colony being saved was that the cure would genically bond the virus, mutuating them into something inhuman, and that virus would have eventually spread through all the other colonies, eventaully finding it's way to earth. Finally the man understood why his friends, and neighbors, and family had attacked him. They had been charged to put a stop to his work, and when that had failed the Angel of Death had come for him. The man realized all of this in an instant, just as the life left his eyes, and as he fell the last thing he saw was the Angel setting about the destruction of the rest of his colony. The power of perception, in life, and in fiction, is a great and powerful thing.

Whatever happened to damn good suspense or mysery in fan fiction? Whatever happened to characters that at LEAST made a show at trying to teach the reader something worthwhile? The origional Germanic story of Little Red Riding Hood (before it was adapted for children) was a gruesome tale, chalk full of angst, but at least it carried an abject lesson. It seems that as writers we're so concerned with inciting emotion in our readers that we've gotten lazy and taken the easy way out. Now we barely attempt to incite emotion from our readers, we try to inflict it. We place the reader within our stories and ask them 'will you take the path of pins? or the path of needles?' And no matter which path of pain they choose, we run down the other path and kill the Grandmother. That is not great fiction, again that is nothing more than the artist painting only with one color. Writers, learn your pallette's. The carapenter does not rely only on the hammer just because it's his favorite, bluntest, cruelest tool.

I was really pressed to make a decision amongst these. To me thats like asking how you would break up something like... say The Wheel of Time series. Is that 3/4 angst, 1/4 fluff? No, because there's a mess of other elements to work with in fiction. It just really irks me that fan fiction now days seems to be so focused and narrow-minded about employing simply angst or fluff. That's like an artist painting with merely black or pink.

It could be the best story ever put to page, but if it had a downright shitty title, I wouldn't give it a second glance. Now this isn't to say that clever if not somewhat cheasy titles apply, such as Robert Asprin's quirky "Myth" series titles. "Myth Conceptions" "Myth Directions" "Little Myth Parker" "Sweet Myth-tery of Life" A little bad title-wise... but his work is still enjoyable.