Fanfiction Part II
Is this level of validation even allowed??
I got my first-ever negative review on fanfiction dot net, for the Willow and Faith story that officially spans four chapters now. Someone who sounded quite disturbed asserted with tears I could practically hear that Tara would never do something so dishonest and disreputable as cheat on Willow. This is where my trademarkish DGAF attitude finds its boundaries, because for several moments there, I really doubted myself not only as a writer but as a human being. I felt like I had really hurt someone, taken away a fictional fidelity they clearly needed and were drawing something from, something real, that I had no business to disrupt. I didn’t even feel the saucy “ooh I hit a nerve there” that might be expected. I really just felt bad. I wondered if I should stop writing this thing all together, but fortunately, I only wondered that for a second. I’m grateful for this unexpected lesson in not-pandering. The two of them hadn’t even fucking kissed yet. Sigh, I thought, I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do.
After I posted the most recent installment, something remarkable happened: a rave review defended my choices, responding with respectful directness to my distressed dissenter. “Even Tara’s allowed to do naughty things!” this reader said. “Let’s give the girl some agency!” Most flatteringly, though, a level of praise in fact that I may not be fit to receive, this reader gave me a bit of feedback that I don’t think the actual Pulitzer could top in validation. She cited some of Faith’s lines — which is to say, my lines, I didn’t appropriate anything I’ve ever received, not for this one, I made all of them up — and said, “I might cheat too if that’s what I’m up against!”
I feel a little too good about my ability to get someone to say that but oh well, we are who we are and we feel how we feel. No doubt there’s a level of escaping moving-stress and a few deep-seated issues I’m still working through by finding not only solace but unending levels of vim in the notion that my smooth-ass lines could render a stranger unfaithful. Put that way it sounds pathological. It is. I suppose that after the weekend I’ve had — no sense detailing it here as it doesn’t make for a compelling read — I’m feeling like a whole lot of shit about me is pathological so I might as well revel to a distasteful agree in what’s actually fun. Meanwhile, I’ve got a personal training appointment followed immediately by therapy this afternoon so Wellness Overload will ensure that I stop and try to get all healthy and shit before sentiments like the above get too out of control.
Not sure how to wrap this one up except to say that I continue to work on two Legit Projects that aren’t Faith/Willow fanfiction but it’s wild to think how helpful the practice of writing characters you already know really is in terms of I’m-not-specifically-sure-what but I can tell I’m getting better. I’ve dedicated the past several months to working on my attention to physical detail and I can tell I’ve improved on this front because I was complimented recently on my attention to physical gestures, a first. Not sure why I’m blabbering about writing this morning: likely because I spent a weekend not having hours-alone-each-day in which I did little but. And now I’m going crazy because I’m biologically wired to engage in this unnatural and physically-unbeneficial act all the fucking time. But that’s fine, because starting in August I’ll get paid for it for 3 years.
Which is wild. It hasn’t hit me yet. Ultimately, very little has. I can’t decide if I need to do an emotional walk-through of the Stonestown Galleria and thank everyone at every shop who has helped me survive via thoughtful retail therapy and occassional light regular-therapy in the not-busy hours, or if I just go, satisfied that in a few months they’ll wonder where I’ve been, the way they did when I was depressed and didn’t go anywhere, barely to work, and when I was a person on Welbutrin and out in the world again it was “It’s been so long!” and “Where were you?”
What people who are barely your acquaintances don’t realize is that this recognition is lifesaving if you’ve spent the better part of 3 years believing that the reason you don’t have many friends where you live is because something is irrevokably wrong with you, only to finally return at the beginning of the year you leave to the place that made you into this creature that you are, a city in the swamp populated with so many such creatures that you can breathe there without question, you can be there without question, and so when you are back here for two more weeks you can be here too, even if there’s inevitable anger simmering over and under your being: what are all you timid fucks so afraid of don’t you know we’re all gonna die someday we’re gonna die we’re gonna die we’re gonna die some—
My personal trainer once told me, appropos of almost nothing, that the notion of his own mortality informs everything he does. “I don’t talk about it,” he said, “But I think about death all the time.” I’m not sure how I got on death from fanfiction but surely there’s a paper in there somewhere.
I should drink the rest of this tea. I thought I would find a coherent track if I kept writing but clearly I’m going into fractal-shapes here and while I could go on — I can always go on — I don’t think my doing so would ultimately benefit any of us. I want to end on something stronger, something definitive, but it’s not coming. I feel I know less than I have ever known and am less sure about former notions of truth than I have ever been, so this is not a morning for certainty, at least not from this particular desk.