Katy Parody
Jan. 12th, 2019 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hiverforestelfI cast a spell and I liked it (hope my best friend don’t mind it)
That’s right: a parody of Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl!
But again, that’s kinda the point. If a character can defy how our world works, what else can they defy? There’s an idea floating around that fantasy is for childish dreamers; and yes, I’m childish, and I like dreams. Real life sucks: there’s war, poverty, sickness, death, family, society, and any number of other things that are out of our control. So doesn’t it make sense that some people would like to control something for once? In the humdrum of everyday life, don’t we all yearn for a spark of something special? With the internet giving us answers to virtually any question we can imagine, isn’t it awesome when characters encounter something they can’t explain—or something their world has never discovered before?
So what even was my previous summary for this story anyway?
-dives into my notes-
Hi, I’m dead, but my name’s Casey. Hartley says we met at a birthday party where I said “Hi, Hartley” and he had no clue who I was, but I don’t remember that at all. My first memory of him was pulling Jessica Keith’s chair out from under her so he could sit next to me instead of her.
Ahhh, this was written with magical ghost!Casey in mind (see yesterday’s post for more on that).
I also found this in the summary section.
A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—Shakespeare, Macbeth
Other bits include this line, which was going to be Wally West’s
I was just going to take you to the cinema, this was awesome! May I have your number?
And this
Shadow being fancy at the shindig
Those all reference the initial idea I had for the beginning of this nonsense: Casey sending his familiar, Shadow of Chaos, in Hartley’s place to a party or some other fancy thing his parents were hosting/going to. Then the idea became Casey going in Hartley’s stead—shapeshifted into Hartley, of course—when I cut Shadow to streamline the cast. I was mostly worried that once the heroics actually began, there wouldn’t be much for him to do or even too much for him to do.
The best thing about fanfiction is that you can write and read about whatever characters you want and ignore the ones you don’t—especially shipping fics. I can write about Leonard Snart and Mick Rory cuddling, and I don’t need to bring Lisa Snart or the other Rogues into that if I don’t want to. But then I start writing story-driven stuff and fretting that I need to use every character and plot point canon does. And if I was talking to somebody else with those exact same fears, I’d tell them go forth and tell your own story. But of course, it’s me, and according to me, everything I do is wrong and a turnoff to readers. Lol.
For me, the following factors are most important to me for reading a fic (once I’ve examined the tags and summary and decided to check it out):
1. Are the characters in character, factoring in whatever stuff’s been thrown at them in this fic? I don’t expect Cisco Ramon to be his typical chipper self after he’s been tortured, for instance. Barry Allen’s canonically capable of seeing? Obviously, he’s not gonna be able to see in an AU where he’s blind.
2. On the flipside of that, if you’re having everyone acting like douchebags, tag it or warn me first. Don’t make me question if you truly believe a character or multiple characters act like douchebags, just be upfront and honest with me. I can’t guarantee that I’ll continue reading characters inexplicably acting like douchebags, but no one likes their favorites bastardized. For example, Ralph Dibny has left such a fowl taste in my mouth that I don’t even watch the show anymore. Allegedly, he’s bettered himself, and even before that, I’m sure he had fans; I wouldn’t hurt those fans by demonizing him without warning them what they’re getting into.
3. Are there paragraph breaks? Or is the idea intriguing enough to motivate me to copy/paste everything into a word doc (I have it set up to put spaces between paragraphs, and then I select keep text only. I delete the doc when I’m done). I only do this for one-shots, though. If you’re publishing a multichapter fic, and you don’t have paragraph breaks by like, chapter three, fuck that shit. In the html for your chapter (assuming you’re on AO3), each paragraph should be bracketed with <p> and </p>, okay? On behalf of my eyeballs, I thank you for taking the time to master this skill. I dunno what the fuck dreamwidth uses. I looked at the html for my previous post, and there were no <p>s in sight, or if they were there, I couldn’t find ‘em.
4. This is the bigger idea of my third point: is the writing decent? By this, I’m not expecting Shakespeare—mostly because Shakespeare bores me. I will acknowledge that his writing’s amazing, but it’s not what I pick up when I wanna Youtube and chill. When I say “is the writing decent?”, I mean “can the author(s) coherently communicate a thought?” And if that sounds intimidating, I promise it’s doable. Hell, I’ve read stuff that wasn’t even in English. And fanfiction will teach you that non-native English speakers can be much more eloquent than fuckwits like me who are trapped in one language. My primary concern in all things I do, not just reading, is getting from point A to point B without too much hassle. That’s why paragraph breaks are important: they’re hassle minimizers. Seriously, master paragraph breaks, or at least put a bunch of spaces at the beginning to simulate an indent. Have some logic behind how X caused Y in your story.
So now that I’ve told you to have some logic behind why things happen in your story, here’s an extract from my own writing that’s devoid of context!
“Alfred, how do you like your eggs?” Casey said after he put two sheets of bacon in the oven and set the timer for chewy bacon. Then he’d take one sheet out and leave the other in for a couple more minutes to make crunchy bacon.
“I can make everyone’s breakfast, Master Casey.”
Casey pulled the carton of eggs away from him, “I always make breakfast…”
“Let him help you, honeycomb,” Vanessa looked up from checking the news and confirming her schedule. “There’s four of us to make breakfast for now.”
Miss Kitka hopped into her lap and began kneading her legs.
“Five,” she petted her, smiling.
“Honeycomb???” Hartley wandered into the dining room and plunked down at the table in one of the seats at her side.
“Casey had jaundice when he was a baby.”
He was golden just like a honeycomb. It was under a Bili light that Vanessa first held his hand…
“Alfred, did I have jaundice?” Hartley asked.
Alfred turned out to face him. He held a bowl of pancake batter in one hand and whisked it with the other, “Master Hartley, you caught so many illnesses growing up, I’m surprised you didn’t get jaundice. Chickenpox, the flu, two bouts of pneumonia in one winter—one year, we all thought you had leukemia; turns out, you just needed more iron in your diet. If there was a germ anywhere on the planet, it had a first-class ticket to your body.”
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-13 10:24 am (UTC)comment reply
Date: 2019-01-13 04:41 pm (UTC)right? :D