Fanfic Author Appreciation Week, Day 5 (I think)

[ciroccoj]

Here I go again, blindly poking my finger at my list of favourite authors and seeing who comes up.

• medee6040. Well, I think woffproff said it best: HOT SEX.
  
  Sexually explicit is normally not my thing. I start to feel kind of uncomfortable around when the body parts come into view, and get a little squicked by excessive realism. "His pubic hair was dark and enticing" really doesn't do it for me, and that's how most writers seem to think one should write explicit sex.
  
  medee6040, though... um, yeah. The Sex is right there, no hiding from it, no euphemisms, no delicate 'and thus they joined, body and soul'. medee6040 lets you know exactly who's doing what, with which, to whom. And, most importantly, how they feel about the whole endeavor. And she makes sex sound like a darn good idea. A great idea, actually >;)
  
  It's probably due to the fact that her characters get such loving attention from medee6040 before they get loving attention from their significant others (or, in one memorable case, from themselves ;). For both her L&O and original characters, she gets into their heads (um, I mean, their minds), into their hopes and needs, their histories, their motivations. And then, after her readers are fully invested and the characters are fully, um, charged, off she goes. And off go their clothes and second thoughts and inhibitions. And... um, I may have to stop writing here, before I decide to follow the links to her stories and kinda forget about the rest of my plans for the day ;)
  
  But enough blah blah. Here's links to what's on thursday100plus:
  
  
  • Shelter from the Cold, for the Exes, Jack & Mike (yes, medee6040 is an equal opportunity smutwriter, slash/het :)
    
    
  • Redemption, for the Dreams challenge, Ben & Claudia (amazing original character).
    
    
  • One on One, for the solitude challenge, Ben & Claudia... sort of.
  
  
  
• jenniferjames had a fairly standard debut in the L&O ficworld: she wrote a short story about a forbidden attraction between a superior and a subordinate. But for once, it was not Jack'n'Claire :)
  
  It was Lt. Anita Van Buren and Det. Ed Green.
  
  Huh? was my reaction. Somehow, that pairing hadn't occurred to anybody. After all, she's (presumably) happily married. She's somewhat older than him. She's his boss. The only things they seem to have in common is that they're both cops and they're both black. Other than that... what's the attraction?
  
  jenniferjames made it real and believable, without any convenient canon-dodging like getting rid of Anita's husband or making Ed a lot older than he seems. Her original short standalone piece eventually evolved into a multi-part story, Improprieties. She took them through a very dicey situation and got them to other side more or less intact and still true to themselves. And along the way, we got to learn quite a bit about the characters. Especially Anita, whom jenniferjames gave a lovingly detailed history that I still go re-read once in a while: Part III, IV, and V of Improprieties, Obligations and Responsibilities.
  
  In fact, that's one of the things I love about jenniferjames's writing: Anita Van Buren's central role. Chris once called me the Original Anita Fan, because when I put together a fanfic writer's page for her, I had to do it practically from scratch. Nobody else had cared enough to gather her life info, memorable quotes and moments, work history, etc. Which was mind-boggling. Such a neat character, brought to life so well by S. Epatha Merkerson, and nobody cared?
  
  Then along came jenniferjames :) Gave Anita the central spot she so deserves. Yay!!
  
  Another thing I love about her writing is its colourfulness :) As in, the way she writes her characters of colour as more than just whites with a really nice tan. Their colour is part of who they are, influencing their cultural background, off-duty dialect, and personal and family histories. They've even (gasp!) been influenced by racism, and not just in the quickie way that L&O tends to do it onscreen. (eg "Is this because I'm black?" "No, of course not!" "Oh, OK.")
  
  And then, on top of all that... she is damn funny :D :D :D
  
  Don't believe me? Go read The Morning After and It's Raining Men (posted on t100+ as More Than A Woman.)
  
  
• senza. Damn. I was hoping my finger wouldn't land on her name, because I'm sure writing this will make me kind of mad. Oh, well, luck of the draw. Grrrr...
  
  senza was, in IMHO, one of the best writers I've ever read. Her work didn't usually have a point or a plot; either nothing was going on, or something was, but you knew what was going to happen way before you got there. The point to her stories was not their destination; the point was the journey itself.
  
  And along the way, there were gorgeous word-pictures, both physical and emotional. She made words come together just beautifully. Sunlight through autumn leaves, wisftul yearning that bubbles up past self-imposed cold logic, a sunny and hushed long-term care wing in a hospital... except, you know, described poetically, not dry and factual like I just did.
  
  Doesn't that sound wonderful? Don't you want me to shut up and just point to her stories so you can grab a nice cup of cocoa and immerse yourself in their beauty?
  
  Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, she had a nasty habit of deleting her own work. She was her own harshest critic - except for one yahoo who once peppered her work on ff.n with reviews like "This sucks. You suck. Eat poo" (I guess they got impatient with the lack of action and absence of "Oh JACK I lov yous o much!! Lov me now too! Lets make sex!!" Damn philistine). This excess of self-criticism was really too bad, because senza wanted to be a writer for real. Kept getting rave reviews from her teachers (and just about anybody else who read her work). And it still didn't matter, because the only critic who really matters to a writer is the writer herself. And that particular critic couldn't seem to chill out for her.
  
  I don't know what senza's doing these days. She deleted her lj a while ago, saying goodbye to us all in a very nice entry that thanked us for being there for her and putting up with her adolescent angst (which, BTW, was actually interesting to read about too). Said she was going to live more in the real world, and off she went. Hopefully, to college. Where (hopefully) she's having a great time, writing, and finally realizing that she's bloody brilliant.
  
  Some day, I hope to open up a critically acclaimed novel by a young American writer, originally from Australia, and see her picture on the jacket. And I will laugh and point and say I TOLD YOU SO!!! and then give the book a great big hug. And buy it, even if it's a hardcover.

Comments

[jenniferjames.livejournal.com]

She took them through a very dicey situation and got them to other side more or less intact and still true to themselves.

Thank you for this, Jim. This is *exactly* what I hoped people would get from the story. I never meant it to be some great ode to forbidden love, but rather a story about how otherwise intelligent folks can sometimes make not so intelligent decisions.

Chris once called me the Original Anita Fan

Hee! I love it! =)

Your praise leaves me breathless. Muchas gracias, mi amiga.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

I never meant it to be some great ode to forbidden love,
Yeah, I think that's one of the things I loved the most about it. There's way too many Their Love Conquered All stories out there. There's not so many stories about attractions that really shouldn't be, and adults who realize that and act (mostly) accordingly.

Muchas gracias, mi amiga.
De nada :)