rantoftheday

Rant of the Week

Bloody "bits"

17th Jan 2012

Why does every author seem to think that "bit" is the only modifier. Your hero is a "bit" frightened, your heroine is a "bit" unhappy, Captain Kirk is a bit unsure, Mr Bennet is a bit sardonic, no one is "somewhat" or "rather" or "a little" or "quite" or even "slightly". Not "a touch" or a "tad" or "faintly" or "vaguely" just a bit, always a bit.

Bloody bits.

Bloody "-nesses"

What is happening to the vocabulary of yer average fanfic author? I am noticing a nasty tendency to use "-ness" words instead of the appropriate noun. Why on earth would anyone write "generousness" when they mean "generosity"? Or "sensitiveness" when they mean "sensitivity"? What is wrong with "ferocity", "humility", "gratitude" or "anxiety" that they have to be replaced with a "-ness" word.

The word these -nesses are replacing are valuable and distinctive and losing them is just contributing to the impoverishment of English.

Bloody -nessses.

20th March 2011

Bloody rants.

When I first conceived the idea of a website of my own, I looked forward to a good collection of rants, to venting my spleen on the madness that is fandom.

It's been a terrible shock to find out I'm basically a sunny soul who loves everyone and everything I meet and can't really find anything to rant about. Now I feel pressured to vent a spleen that is perfectly happy unvented.

Bloody rants.

16th July 2008

Bloody fanon.

You know what I mean, those ideas which seem to form part of the show's canon but which have been invented by fans. Pros seems particularly prone to fanon and often I can't see where the ideas have come from, since they seem to contradict what we see on screen.

For example, where has the idea come from that Bodie is a man of mystery who refuses to discuss his past? We can plainly see in Wild Justice that, if he's asked a straightforward question; he'll give a straightforward answer. He won't discuss Northern Irish politics, but that hardly counts as hiding his past. Or take the idea that Doyle lives in swinish squalor and Bodie in military neatness, have they seen the flats in DIAG and Purging? Of the two, Bodie's is definitely the more Men-Behaving-Badly. I could go on: the weird idea that Doyle, who wanders around in his shirtsleeves, hates the cold or that Bodie is the posher of the two - I hate to break it to you foreigner johnnies but Mr Collins does a terrible posh voice.

As for K/S - I wonder how many people think Mr Nimoy has a double-ridged todger?

I think the main reason I dislike fanon, is that it's the easy way out. Real imagination is a vanishingly rare resource, but that's no excuse for meekly accepting someone else's

Bloody Fanon

20th May 2008

Bloody broken promises.

Jess's second law of fanfic states that anyone who tells you in a public forum that they will email you their appreciation individually, won't. They just won't.

Now I realise that readers don't have to feedback if they don't want to - but if you're not going to, don't tell me you will. We authors are fragile souls, if you say you will and don't - we'll assume you've changed your mind. We'll assume that you've realised that what you originally thought was a heart-warming, spine-tingling plot, expressed in finely- tuned, rhythmical prose, is in fact a pile of foetid tarradiddle. Broken hearted, we retire to lurk on lists, chiming in occasionally to complain about young people today.

And all because someone said they'd feedback and didn't.

Bloody broken promises

3rd May 2008

Bloody slash vocabulary.

I mean where else do you see the word "laved" (or on one memorable occasion "lathed") when what the author means is "licked"? Or "nub" for nipple? Or "moist cavern" for mouth (I admit I perpetrated that one once)? Or "sac" for balls? Or "viscous" when the author meant "vicious"? Or come to that (ho ho) authors who don't know the difference between sperm and semen? Or all that "delicious" semen? Just once I'd like a first-time fellator to go "uurghhhh"

I want fandom to rise up and demand a moratorium on these and other old faithfuls.

Bloody slash vocabulary.

17th April 2008

Bloody fan poetry.

Don't.

Just, don't.

4th April 2008

Bloody non-stories! I don't mean bad stories, a story can be bloody awful and still be a story, still have something to say. A non-story is just a list of events, what I once called "First this, then that, then The End". A lot of drabbles (see below) are non-stories and so are a lot of first times.

"I'm leaving," said Doyle (or Bodie)

"You can't leave, I love you," said the other one.

"You can't love your very male partner, "said the other, other one - er Doyle (or Bodie)

"Yes, I can, angelfish," said Bodie (or is it Doyle?)

Then they rip off their clothes and have the sort of sex I once heard memorably described, with accompanying mime, as "One finger, two fingers, three fingers, PUSH!"

Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly possible to have a story on this basic scenario, but you have to have something more than just the events it describes. Stories have to be for something. They need a purpose, not just filling the page/screen or trawling for comments. If an author has nothing to say, then they should keep their traps shut.

Bloody non-stories!

25th March 2008

Bloody kids. I've been poking around NCIS slash, largely because I've fancied David McCallum since about 1968 and the poor chap is obviously, at least according to some writers, on his last legs. There's his character, apparently fit as a flea on the TV and there's the writers, assuming that at Dr Mallard's advanced age, sex is confined an occasional smoochy handjob. I've noticed this before, and as a lady who won't see 49 again, I resent it. Older people have sex, you know. Older people like sex - a lot. If you don't want to write it - don't. Just don't assume it isn't happening.

Bloody kids.

16th March 2008

Bloody drabbles! For one thing, half the people who write them, don't seem to know what they are - a story of exactly 100 words (excluding title) WITH A POINT. So often what you get is either a paragraph of vague musing or, even worse, a short story chopped into arbitrary 100 word chunks.

Drabbles to be worth reading need a sting in the tail, a punchline, otherwise all you get is lazy writers slamming down half-formed "ideas" which really aren't worth reading.

8th March 2008

Home