Nothing like a pseudo-surly tone to start your week. GOOD MORNING! It is sunshiny and nice today and I have energy and no more congestion and life is fine. Had a Girl's Weekend - rented a hotel suite, had sushi, many bottles of wine, hired a masseuse to put us all to sleep and NOT in the fun way, 
poshcat, so sorry. I think at one point I drooled - that was when she was cracking my back, glaaaah. So grood. One girl brought me a bottle of tequila, and then the rest of my friends sat pretzel-legs waiting for me to drink it. Uh.... Whee? One obligatory shot and then back to the wine, freaks!
In other news, I got two more comments on the writer's anonymous meme. The first comment was absolute pants, if I may borrow a phrase from my Euro-pals. You can read it here. The second one, while starting to get the idea of constructive criticism, really didn't tell me anything. I mean, I'm a big girl, and I can take people pointing out errors and such, or areas of focus (see the comments above fromlettered - excellent advice, well said, has had me thinking about it for a week), but telling me that I need to work on the tone of my parody fics? Which fic? How? Is it possible that tone is as subjective as well as humor when talking about something like Wee!Spike or Silence of the Hams?
And what I mean by that is: a joke that works on Miss Marple isn't necessarily going to work on South Park. And vice versa. And I've written both kinds of fics. Um, meaning the dichotomy of tone as related to humor. It would have been nice to get more information from the anony mousie, but I'm not sweating bullets. As obnoxious as this may sound, I'm not really going to take advice about how to be funny from many people. Sorry. If someone's in the biz? You bet. But I worked in the industry with some pretty damned funny people - none of them take ANYONE's advice. We just feed off each other like cannibals with cream pies and seltzer bottles.
And ultimately... I'm going to keep on keeping on and listen to the folks I respect re: technical aspects of writing. But thanks for playing, anonymous #2 - and I left it open for them to continue the discussion. Come over here if you wish to expound - it's all good.
And finally, we're trying to shake things up at
a_list_celebs. We need new blood, want new characters, want funny people. I've been told it's intimidating to apply there. Wha?? No, no, no. Silly, funny, good times of all stripes. All sorts of funny are cherished and wanted. Have a celebrity that you adore? Want to make them into a parody of themselves? Are they so crazy they don't NEED to be cracked out? Write up a sample entry and email celeb_letters2U [at] hotmail .com. And if this isn't your bag, maybe you know some crazy person that would like to join? Spread the word. I'll love you for it. :D
HAPPY MONDAY!! *sticks fluffy kittens in everyone's IN box*
ETA: and the teeeeeeniest of flist trims. Not a thing personal, just journals I haven't interacted with in many months, divergent interests, etc. NOTHING personal. It's just LJ, folks. And if you want to reciprocate, fine, fine, and I'm still keeping most things public, you aren't "missing out." I'm still dorktastic for all the world to see.
poshcat, so sorry. I think at one point I drooled - that was when she was cracking my back, glaaaah. So grood. One girl brought me a bottle of tequila, and then the rest of my friends sat pretzel-legs waiting for me to drink it. Uh.... Whee? One obligatory shot and then back to the wine, freaks!In other news, I got two more comments on the writer's anonymous meme. The first comment was absolute pants, if I may borrow a phrase from my Euro-pals. You can read it here. The second one, while starting to get the idea of constructive criticism, really didn't tell me anything. I mean, I'm a big girl, and I can take people pointing out errors and such, or areas of focus (see the comments above from
lettered - excellent advice, well said, has had me thinking about it for a week), but telling me that I need to work on the tone of my parody fics? Which fic? How? Is it possible that tone is as subjective as well as humor when talking about something like Wee!Spike or Silence of the Hams?And what I mean by that is: a joke that works on Miss Marple isn't necessarily going to work on South Park. And vice versa. And I've written both kinds of fics. Um, meaning the dichotomy of tone as related to humor. It would have been nice to get more information from the anony mousie, but I'm not sweating bullets. As obnoxious as this may sound, I'm not really going to take advice about how to be funny from many people. Sorry. If someone's in the biz? You bet. But I worked in the industry with some pretty damned funny people - none of them take ANYONE's advice. We just feed off each other like cannibals with cream pies and seltzer bottles.
And ultimately... I'm going to keep on keeping on and listen to the folks I respect re: technical aspects of writing. But thanks for playing, anonymous #2 - and I left it open for them to continue the discussion. Come over here if you wish to expound - it's all good.
And finally, we're trying to shake things up at
a_list_celebs. We need new blood, want new characters, want funny people. I've been told it's intimidating to apply there. Wha?? No, no, no. Silly, funny, good times of all stripes. All sorts of funny are cherished and wanted. Have a celebrity that you adore? Want to make them into a parody of themselves? Are they so crazy they don't NEED to be cracked out? Write up a sample entry and email celeb_letters2U [at] hotmail .com. And if this isn't your bag, maybe you know some crazy person that would like to join? Spread the word. I'll love you for it. :DHAPPY MONDAY!! *sticks fluffy kittens in everyone's IN box*
ETA: and the teeeeeeniest of flist trims. Not a thing personal, just journals I haven't interacted with in many months, divergent interests, etc. NOTHING personal. It's just LJ, folks. And if you want to reciprocate, fine, fine, and I'm still keeping most things public, you aren't "missing out." I'm still dorktastic for all the world to see.
- Spock is::
happy
'Oos dis bint, then?
- stoney321
- Laura Stone
- Hey, Don't Judge Me
Comments
I'm no technician, sadly, but what I love about your fic is its sheer audacity. Your willingness to go waaaaaay out on a limb and then tap dance on the leaves.
And your "smaller" less broad comidies or RPS pack a mean punch, too. I can still *see* the japaneze garden Ewan and Hayden were in, and think about it sometimes. I can picture the whole debacle of the "Twelve Days of Christmas," which too the day has me giggling in schadenfrude. Controlled, Victorian hysteria to Snyder/Wilkins ass babies. That's range, baby.
I only got one comment on my great write meme - but it was a really lovely one.
And thanks for the compliments, I promise I wasn't fishing! I'm always interested to hear what does and doesn't work from a technical standpoint, but if the person isn't going to go into detail... *shrugs*
Oooh! you did? I need to go check! That post is monster big, now. What page are you on, do you know? *prepares to scroll*
Girl's weekends are nice with all the rubbing and the drinking! I need to have one of those soon!
Sorry that the criticism that you're getting is neither constructive nor real criticism. That's always frustrating!
And, for the record, your funny is the best kind of funny!
"Girl's weekends are nice with all the rubbing and drinking!" Now, you KNOW people are going to take that to a nughty place, right? :D
As for the "criticism," if all you've read of mine (as far as homor fics go) is Wee!Spike, well, then I can see why you'd "buzuh?" me. But, for example, the PotC fic I'm writing is a real departure in a lot f ways for me. Lots of dialogue, lots of humor, and almost in a sit-com type scenario, I've been told. Which is fine by me.
*squish* You're an absolute dear.
I'm sure I don't need to expound any further.
I thought the tap-dancing on leaves was funny, too. Did you read the tone one? Care to clue me in on that? *sits at your feet, pen poised over notebook*
I didn't comment on anybody's posts to that thread, b/c anonymity makes me uncomfortable. Personally, I really enjoy the parody fics -- particularly the Godfather one, because Wesley/Michael and Spike/Sonny is so damn perfect. But I do think these parodies really depend on the reader being up on 3 things at once: the canon, the fanon (including common stupid badfic writer tricks), AND the text being parodied -- so, say, I don't know "Silence of the Lambs" well enough to appreciate that parody as well. And while the "Sound of music" parody made me laugh, I felt like I was missing a lot b/c I could tell you were mocking certain tendencies in fanfic (MPREG, over-feminizing slash, etc) which come from the kind of fics that I don't read -- so I didn't get a lot of the jokes until they were explained to me. So I di That's an issue with parody in general, but I think there are some parodies that work when the audience only has a general idea of the subject, while yours require intimate knowledge. That's not a value judgment, just an observation on how writing interacts with audience.
I'm sure you're familiar with this issue, having a background in comedy (does the phrase "the Dennis Miller ratio" mean anything to you?)
This goes to the larger issue of obscurity and applies to a lot of non-parody fic. Or for that matter, non-fanfic by a lot of very good writers -- sometimes, the more clever and allusive a story is, the more it limits the audience. The whole issue reminds me of something Randall Jarrell said about Ezra Pound (hahahaha -- I just got to modernist poetry criticism from pregnant-Spike in a dress! I should talk about being obscure!) OF course, I don't actually have the quote, but his basic point is that Pound's poetry works if you have read the exact same books that he has read, and shared the exact same experiences that he has lived, finishing with the observation that Pound "scribbled notes on the margins of the universe" and that to understand his work, you had to know the original yourself.
Gah. I really do sound like a pretentious yob, don't I? BtVS-era Wesley would totally buy me dinner for this post. Trying to boil down my point -- I'm not saying that your parodies ARE as obscure as esoteric modern poetry, but that that's what you risk when making your work so dependent on the reader sharing your understanding and view of multiple texts.
Oooh, and as for the intimate knowledge, okay. I can completely understand that. I think that's true for most comedy, however. SOme jokes are broad, and some are inside - alll within something as widely accepted as the Airplane movies, for example. Something fly over your head. (Dennis Miller ratio - BWAH!)
And again, I can agree with the points you brought up. That being said, I don't ONLY write parody fics. I have humor fics that have nothing to do with parody. "Let Go and Let Joss" for example. All you need is a working knowledge of BtVS or AtS for that. Or any of the Andrew fics. More broad, sit-com humor. But, that's expecting people to read everything I've done, and NO ONE has done that, so I'll just get over myself right now.)
And I'll agree with you 100% on the aspect of writing is something you need to DO to get better. Of course, having someone poke and prod along the way is incredibly helpful. My current beta for the PotC fic I'm writing is very abrupt and to the point with things I need to focus on. At one point, I had about three pages of exposition for something COMPLETELY unrelated to the main story, but in my head I needed to justify how I got to point B. She made me cut all of it out. And I had toiled for DAYS on it - researching, etc. *woe*
Excellent advice, and made me realize that I'm doing a lot of "Diana Gabaldoning" as in: overwhelming the reader with minutia to create the characters and their settings, instead of letting the narrative flow and dialogue just... flow.
Anywho, my point, humour is subjective. The commenter appeared to like mime. Most people would say mime is what is technically refered to as "not funny." To each his own.
Gotta love comments that are entirely unhelpful in their vagueness. "Overall good, some bits I didn't like." Okay...WHICH bits? Now it shall drive me INSANE!
MIME. Well, who doesn't like mime?? Highest form of art/humor known to man. Unless it's a monkey smoking a cigarette on roller skates, because that is BRILLIANCE.
(I read a book today!! WTF? I'm feeding cheerins and then playing, if you're gonna be around)
I did like the other person that gave you solid concrit. POV is so important in writing. Made me think about my writing too. See, I learned something too. Now I just need to actually start writing again.
WHAT?? How?! Dear god, please explain that to me, and I promise I will shut my mouth and listen because HOW?@?@
And ditto on TKP's concrit. It was excellent, and now I'm hyper aware of it - so I'm working harder, as I should have been all along, you know? *pokes you to write*
We've been talking about doing this for a few months. WB#1 and I try and get away at least once a year and pamper ourselves because we NEVER spend money on ourselves - always the kids or the house, you know? So we roped the other two into setting aside the weekend MONTHS in advance, and that's it. I laid out the frame work for what was to be expected, so if they weren't comfortable with the agenda, no harm no foul, but we ain't changing. :D
WB#1 is a great friend of mine, totally fun and fun-loving, so she feeds the group her good karma/attitude. It just goes from there! I highly recommend SOMETHING just for you and a friend to do. If we can't get away overnight, we pool together for a sitter and go get pedicures and drink margaritas. Just a few hours really helps, you know?