Water's October, Right?: House Fanfiction Discussion

I generally do write safe sex, unless the couple is in a firmly established monogamous relationship. But then, in my life, there has never been a time where condoms weren't considered a part of the sexual experience (unless you're reeeeally Catholic). They are absolutely necessary in the story I'm writing now. (I had to think long and hard, though, about bringing dental dams into it. And I said no, because I am just not up to the challenge of making those even vaguely appealing.) Sometimes, of course, the point is unsafe sex, which can be a character point like anything else - I recently read a Chase/Cameron fic where Chase noted that there wasn't a condom, because the point was that Cameron had a pattern of getting careless when she was upset.

After reading through all 28 or so pages of this topic, I have a comment ... well, several, but I'll keep it short for now. I've noticed that very few fic writers go into much detail in describing the characters. There's House's pianist's hands and lanky build, Wilson's hair and "doe eyes," etc. But real description is often ignored. I'm guilty of glossing over descriptions too, to an extent, but I'm trying to do better. As ticcy might say, we all know what they look like, but it's not so much how the writer sees Wilson or House or Cuddy. It's how the characters see each other. Cameron's take on Foreman would be very different from Chase's, for example. I'd love to see a contest somewhere challenging writers to describe the characters, in one paragraph each. Features, style, posture, taste in clothes, how they move ... from another character's point of view. I'm not a writer, but I'll comment on this. This may be one of my personal, unreasonable squicks when reading: if I encounter excessive character description, I'll usually drop the story. For the most part, even a little bit is too much. Both the readers and the characters already know what everyone looks like, so descriptions, especially in character's thoughts, seem really unnecessary. The only exceptions are first meeting fic, if there's a sudden change in character appearance (e.g., so and so is looking unhealthy today), or one character is re-evaluating another, though that often comes close to my squick. There's a huge difference for me in describing character's looks (often in flowery detail) and blocking in good action with an eye for characterization. I think zulu's particularly good at the latter, as are some other writers. I believe I even left a rare comment once saying as much :oops: I'm not saying that your exercise wouldn't be interesting, I just generally don't enjoy it as part of a story. I can only take so much description of House's 'lean torso', or 'slender hands', or 'blue eyes', or Wilson's 'floppy hair'. I actually shudder when I see the words, 'lean torso'. Just writing them is making me sick :wink:

Not too long ago, I realized something MORONIC I'd done with safe sex, though: very carefully had them use a condom for anal but ignored it for for oral! Wow, I felt like an idiot when I realized that. (Left the fic as is, though, because I personally have a latex-taste squick.) Yes. Gross. This would be why I would leave condoms out of oral (and have done!) even though House & Co. probably wouldn't. In the scenes where I don't mention a condom, I usually make some mention of clean STD panels or pregnancy or some kind of justification for it. It's kind of a frightening time to be getting laid, what with diseases. Might as well make life easier. :shock:

very carefully had them use a condom for anal but ignored it for for oral! Wow, I felt like an idiot when I realized that. Actaully, because oral sex is the lowest risk kind of penetrative sex (For HIV, at least--I don't know about other things), and anal is the highest, it's not at all unusual for people to skip condoms for oral and use them for anal. And I'm not just saying that because that's what I had them do in the Threesomeverse--it's real science! I'll look for a cite later--have to go up to my new job and get my ID and parking sticker before the students descend.

It's not the case for gonorrhoea, chlamydia and HPV -- to name a few.

I think sometimes it might be just as hard and scary for a reader to write a review as it is for the writer to write a story. Do I say what I feel; do I think I am in a position to advise; do I say that I thought scene 24 was a bit off; oh god - I can't even put a sentence together. I can't write for buggery. If I leave a review they will think I'm a total moron. Writing on the Internet is a bit like public speaking. It's a scary thing. That's one of my problems. I'm not a writer and so when I go to write a review (or just post anything in general) it takes me about three hours to figure out what I want to say, to get it all down without sounding like a complete idiot, to spellcheck everything (I have AWFUL spelling), worrying about the author accidently taking what I say wrong and getting offended, etc. And I don't even give crit; I just review stories I like. I always try to give well thought out reviews because I know authors like those better than just getting "Great job!" but then it takes so much work most of the time I don't bother reviewing. :oops:

Norah, I do understand the apprehension, for I have been there when deciding how to respond to others' stories. For what it's worth, writers appreciate a simple "I enjoyed this a lot" very much. You don't have to be lengthy or anything. I've put stories out there and had only four or five remarks, and it always makes me wonder what I did wrong. Another four or five brief hellos would have made a huge difference; I would at least have known that someone read and liked the thing.

I agree with BM. Writers like to know people are reading their stories. But writers should also be aware that because of the nature of the Internet many more people than they think read their stuff. Although it frustrates people some of the time FF.Pit Of Voles is actually my prefered site. It's simple, easy to update (and edit a story) and you can see the number of hits so you know you are not sending stuff out into the wilderness. It's also good because you have to sell your story a bit - no I suk at summeries. Not everyone is a movie critic and although they may read your stuff it just might not be their cup of tea - everyone has different ships and ideas about House fandom. ... ETA I just had to share this because it is so sweet. I was just reading an article about an Aboriginal (our first Australians) artist and she was talking about how the old fellas would tell stories on the beach. "They were called sandbeach stories because you could just brush them away when you finished and start on another story." And I thought: what a lovely way to describe fan fiction. There, not there - washed away by the next high tide.

For me, I find ff.net frustrating as heck for uploading stories -- seems their 'bot is down half the time I want to load something -- and for editing the only way I've found to do it is to completely upload a whole new version, which raises the whole 'bot issue again. The ff.net 'bot was down for hours yesterday. Then half the time it seems like the message system is screwed up so you get no messages for weeks, then six of them jumbled up in two hours. Maybe it's because I write on a Mac, and have to transfer everything over to an .rtf file for them -- and half the time it doesn't even load the whole file. Then if I want to upload it to the squidge archive, I need a completely different file, with the formatting completely different for quotes. So I end up having copies of everything in three formats. LJ, to me, is quick, easy and painless. Copy and paste from any format, and edit just one word or the whole thing.

Can someone tell me teh protocal for posting to one of the LJ communities. I posted my latest fic on Housefic and I want to post Chapters 2 and Three there. Do I just post them as new entries or do I link from the original post? If this is OT, please respond to me via PM.

Oh man - another MAC user. Save us all from the Maccers. I can't even work a Mac mouse. I once spent half an hour pushing one around trying to work out which bit was the button to push. You have my admiration Namaste. But LJ is good, but it has limits on posts and when you are as verbose as me it is a bugger and you have to meme and so forth. But yes, I agree - FF is a bit finicky - but you can export a document and edit it, then pop it back. I thought that was quite nifty. Of course that took me three years to discover, but I'm not the brightest. Troops Just post the latest bit, but also post links to the old ones on LJ. Or if you want just link to the latest chapter on ff.POV and people can find there way from there. That's what everyone else seems to do.

TC, post as new chapters separately, but include a link to chapt 1 in your summary of chapt 2, links to chapt 1 & 2 in the summary of chapt 3, etc so if someone hasn't read that they can find it easily. Yeah, ff & macs, not the greatest combination, its the d%$@ editing that gets me. I do like the system to that tells you how many folks have read & how many & who have favorited, but the audience is so different there - their tastes are the complete opposite of ljs it seems at times (gen Foreman is ignored, Cammie is adored & vice versa).

Namaste, I use a Mac (sorry, Sheep! I'm one of THEM!) and I found that my ff.net life -- and LJ for that matter -- got WAY easier when I downloaded Mozilla Firefox for my browser. Now that's what I use for posting at the Pit. I can pull up an old document, delete the text, and cut and paste in my new story in Rich Text format -- which saves me having to go through and correct all the d*** html glitches that I used to get when I uploaded things. I still don't understand the export/edit thing of which Sheep speaks, though.

Hey, I love my Mac, tyvm. And I don't post to FF.net so I don't have a problem, heh.

I have a Dell laptop for work, DIYsheep, so I speak both languagees. And believe me, I'm not converting anytime soon. I've never gotten a blue screen of death on my Mac, and never had to reboot my Mac every 90 minutes just because the wireless card suddenly decides not to work. Or had to manually alter the WiFi connection. And what's with that massive charger for Dell laptops anyway? On LJ, I've posted chapters and fics that are well over 12,000 words, and never had a problem. *shrugs* Anyway ... the export thing that DIY was mentioning, Blackmare allows you to alter and repost chapters. Or, when the posting 'bot is down, export a file, replace the content with the new story or chapter, and load it rather than uploading an entirely new document. That's what I was attempting to do last night when the 'bot was down, but it insisted on triple spacing between each line. Go figure. I just waited 12 hours to post. It's the standard workaround for when the 'bot is down. Of course just the fact that there's a "standard workaround" points to an issue within the Pit anyway. And, by the way, I already use Firefox for both laptops -- work and home.

View Full Version: Water's October, Right?: House Fanfiction Discussion