Words in the Heroes' Tongue

I’ve just returned from the 2010 WriterCon UK event at Coventry. It was immensely enjoyable and gentlemen (and women) in England now a-bed should think themselves accursed they were not there. Well worth the 9-hour journey each way. Anyone, from any fandom, who enjoys good company and has a sense of humour should definitely consider attending next year’s event – which will be held in the same place.

I was, appropriately, one of the speakers. I had given presentations at two of the previous three writerconuk events but, because I was working from very sketchy notes and improvising as I went along, I didn’t manage to reproduce them in post form afterwards. This time I was better prepared, with a detailed script, and so I present a transcript here for everyone to read (also posted, with a slightly different preamble, at the writerconuk community).

( Writing Original Characters readers don’t hate )

I'm not sure whether to be pleased or to be annoyed about the current spate of discussions of the Mary Sue issue on LJ.

I will be doing a talk at this year's WriterCon UK on the subject of 'Writing Original Characters readers don't hate'. Some of the recent posts have included points that may be of use to me; on the other hand if the issue is too widely discussed it may make my planned talk superfluous.

So far no-one has come up with anything that duplicates the core principle that I will be putting forward but it can only be a matter of time.

The good: yesterday I discovered Fever Beats by Thea Gilmore. Only six years after it was released but better late than never.

The bad: I read (courtesy of a good Friend, no way would I pay for it) Buffy Season 8 issue 13. As usual it filled me with an intense hatred of Buffy. This does make it rather difficult for me to get on with writing Buffy-centric stories. It didn’t even contain any useful plot hooks for Giant!Dawn crackfic. Really the whole thing was crackfic, or even badfic, and it’s very hard to parody utter drivel.

The ugly: In order to cure my Buffy-hatred I went to Just Rewards and read some classic Spuffy fics. Unfortunately I’d had a reading spree recently in which I’d re-read all of Enigmatic Blue’s, Barb’s, Tales of Spike’s and a few other favourite authors' stories; I had to fall back on some fics by writers who are rather less skillful. I kept being jerked out of the mood by sloppy word usage. ‘Loose’ for ‘lose’, ‘loathe’ for ‘loath’ and vice versa, and one I had never seen before and which totally cracked me up; ‘in loo of’ for ‘in lieu of’. One perennial error inspired me to write the following drabble set at the end of ‘Not Fade Away’...
( The Last Hurrah of the Golden... Handshake? )

Happy Birthday to rustybitch

Belated Happy Birthdays to spiralleds, killerweasel (without whom I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the comics about Buffy-C in the World With Scottish Wolves), spikeslovebite, and to dragon_prince.

During my last nights off work I was working simultaneously on the conclusion of ‘Life, Resumed’, the next chapter of ‘Came the Thunder’, and the next chapter of ‘Tabula Avatar’. As a result I didn’t finish anything, other than the ‘Olaf’ crossover ficlet, but I should be able to complete at least one of the above during my next five nights off work. I had hoped to do some writing during the mornings of these shift days but the nights have been so busy that I haven’t had the energy.

On my last night off I needed to look something up from a previous chapter of ‘Tabula Avatar’. I became sidetracked and ended up re-reading a substantial part of the story. As usual I spotted errors that had slipped past unnoticed at the time of first posting; for instance this one, from the party’s first battle against Bodhi & company;

‘A gray humanoid finger lunged at Buffy.’

Obviously that should read ‘figure’. I corrected it, here on LJ, at TtH, and on my website. It just shows that no-one is immune to the curse of the emancipated wolves.

I also made some corrections to those past chapters. It occurred to me that I had never made it clear that the rather erratic functioning of the vampire invite rule in the ‘Tabula Avatar’ universe is intentional and not simply because I was forgetting about it. I’ve inserted some passages, at appropriate points, that show that Spike has noticed the inconsistency too. He has no way, at this time, of knowing the reason behind it (he’s in a computer game, where the central character’s party can always gain access to any building if to do so is necessary to the plot, and the metaphysical laws behind the invite rule are being overridden by the game mechanics) and so I’m not giving that explanation in-story as yet.

I also inserted a passage to clarify the reasons behind Nalia joining the party for occasional missions; this was something requested by a reader, who pointed out that I’d brought her in without explanation, but I can’t remember who and I can’t find the original comment or review. Thanks to that unknown person.

And thanks to the unknown person who has nominated ‘The Hour of the Troll’ in the ‘Best Crossover: Book’ category at the Sunnydale Memorial Fanfiction Awards.

Happy birthday to globalfruitbat and to darkestarx

I hate ‘Rhyming Review Day’ at ‘Twisting the Hellmouth’. Getting a bad review is so much worse when someone has gone to the trouble of writing it as an epic poem with 9 verses detailing the shortcomings of my portrayal of each of the characters.

Happy birthday to melancthe

Belated happy birthday to higlearn

I have been vaguely thinking about doing a poll asking what people thought was the all-time best Buffyverse fanfic. Perhaps ‘The Last Tin Soldier’ by liz_marcs? shadowscast’s ‘Fragments’ series, or her ‘Sock Puppet’? rahirah’s ‘Necessary Evils’? The short story ‘I, Bot’ that used to be hosted on Valerie X’s site (but which, alas, seems to have disappeared from the Net now and so I can’t name the author)? I gave up the idea of a poll because I’m not even sure that I could make up my own mind. Feel free to make suggestions anyway (and if anyone knows where ‘I, Bot’ is these days I’d be delighted).

I was also tempted to do a poll for Worst Ever Fic but I decided that it was a Bad Idea. Too much potential for upsetting people and starting fights. Oddly enough the story that I was thinking of nominating would have been my number one contender for Best Ever right up until the last page; but the ending was so utterly dire that it turned apparent brilliance into dross worse than the most dreadful Mary-Sue tale ever inflicted upon dwellers in the Pit of Voles by an educationally-challenged fourteen-year-old. And no, I’m not going to reveal what it is.

In what little time I have for writing on work days I'm busy with another little Olaf ficlet. Just 1,000 words, and my first ever 'Discworld' crossover. 763 words done so far. None of which, alas, will make a good last line. It isn't what is behind the cut; that's some minor bitching about the comics.
( Minor spoilers for Buffy Season 8 Issue 12 )

The results of my Original Character poll are fairly conclusive; Sorkatani wins, with as many votes as all of the others put together. I’m rather surprised that Anna only received one vote; okay, she’s a ruthless killer who has been indoctrinated since childhood with the idea that it is her duty to shove a sharpened bicycle spoke through Dawn’s heart, but she’s a good girl really.

Viconia is, of course, not an Original Character of mine; she was created by the writers at Bioware.

During this set of nights off work various real-life issues, involving moving furniture and painting walls, have cut into my writing time and energy, but I might have something to post tomorrow; a surprise continuation of a fic that I haven’t touched for months.

Belated Happy Birthday to rhionnach; Happy Birthday to digopheliadug and adriana_is

Recently agilebrit mentioned that she had begun work on a story about time travel to the Garden of Eden. I immediately dashed off a drabble on the subject and posted it in her Comments. I have now decided to share it with the rest of you. 100 words, PG.
( Escape From Eden )

Belated happy birthdays to empresspatti, daibhid_c, constance_b and audela.

I hate, loathe, and despise 'Masterchef' with a deep and abiding passion. Just saying.

Here is a poll, just for my own amusement, about the female original characters who I have featured in my stories.

[Poll #1141617]

Tonight I went along to the Co-op to get some milk (and I couldn’t resist getting some of their chocolate caramel shortbread, but that is another story) and my route took me past a bookshop. It used to be a good bookshop but it changed hands and the current owners seem to see it as their mission to fill it with as much junk and as few saleable books as possible. One of the books on display in the window is The Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark.

To quote a review on Amazon.co.uk, it is ‘the authorised 50th-anniversary sequel to The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, that classic SF nightmare which gave our language the word "triffid".’

There are a large number of such ‘authorised sequels’ in existence. Gone with the Wind sequels Scarlett and Rhett Butler's People, Peter Pan in Scarlet, The Dragon Lensman, the James Bond continuations by James Gardner and others, and many more.

There are a lot of follow-ups to Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories written by other authors. First came L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter’s stories that were based on uncompleted drafts of stories by Howard himself, then they wrote original material, and then everyone else seemed to get in on the act. Examples include Robert Jordan’s abominable Chronicles of Conan, all the Roy Thomas Conan graphic novels that were his creations rather than re-tellings of the Robert E. Howard originals, Harry Turtledove’s new Conan of Venarium, and Conan and the Grim Grey God by Sean A. Moore which is notable because the only review on Amazon.co.uk is the author’s own (beginning My favorite of the Conan novels I've written thus far - I rather doubt that anyone else will describe it as their favourite anything!).

They’re fanfic. Some are reasonable, many are crap, but they’re all fanfic; unless the contracted author didn’t really like the original material and is writing solely for the money, which usually produces extremely flat and tedious results.

Fanfic, then, to the Establishment, is something that is of universally poor quality and to be derided – unless they are making money out of it!

I noticed something else odd today. There are no Conan crossovers at all on 'Twisting the Hellmouth'. I wonder why?

Happy birthday to samson28

I have just deleted my Greatest Journal. I'm fed up with getting comment spam and it's not like I ever use it these days. Although I am seriously less than thrilled about the sale of LiveJournal to a Russian oligarch it would be Insane Journal that I flee to if it comes down to it. I might not be using Insane Journal much but then I'm not spending anything like as much time on LiveJournal as I used to either.

One of the main reasons is that I've finally managed to get BGTutu working. It's a program that allows you to play the original Baldur's Gate game with the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. Vastly improved screen resolution, dual wielding, extra character classes; it adds a lot to the original game and I'm replaying it from the beginning. The only problem with BGTutu is a habit that it has of crashing on entry to, or exit from, Beregost; and corrupting the saves in the area where the crash happened. I was halfway through the game when I made the mistake of bringing all my saves up to date in Beregost and they all ended up corrupted. I had to start again from the beginning. This time I'm running multiple saves, only one of which is ever a Beregost save, and hopefully I won't end up in the same position again.

I am writing as well, of course; I'm most of the way through the next 'Tabula Avatar' chapter and I'm just about to write a certain long-awaited scene. I plan to finish off 'Life, Resumed' as a Xmas present to those who followed it; I do have a problem in that my beta Curious Wombat said that my planned ending was silly and made no sense, thereby derailing the whole project, and I haven't thought up any alternative yet. Hopefully something will come to me as I write. An alternative would be continuing 'Sunnydale Passions'. I stalled on that because the next chapter was supposed to pivot on a biological quirk of the kangaroo; except that I was going from memory and when I checked up on the facts I found that the quirk in question applies only to wallabies. I have an idea as to how I can get around it, by having a character make the same mistake that I made and then Skippy setting him right, but any loss of writing momentum always causes long delays in my writing. I haven't been able to think of anything at all as a Xmas short this year. Although I did have a thought about a BtVS/Robbie the Reindeer crossover...