I've got so many things I could tell you.
Aug. 17th, 2024 08:54 pmThe first time I heard the Neko Case song "City Swans" it was at a concert, presented as a new song not yet on an album. Even after I got The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You and listened to it a couple of times, I like to say I didn't hear "City Swans" a second time until I heard it at a concert again.
Ten years ago, I posted Stubborn Mouths: Humans in Translation. It didn't come out of listening to the song, and a lot of it came from listening to it and trying to figure out exactly how it made me feel, so when I went to write, I'd know what I was trying to chase down.
I've written a lot in the last ten years, mostly because I never stopped for very long. I've picked up new fandoms, found my way back to old ones, and spent a lot of time pursuing original projects. I've written other fics with more sophisticated plots, and fics that do more with incomplete points of view and narrative perspective to develop a sense of character within the fic framework. I've done challenges, collaborations, and experimental pieces to see if I could pull those stories off. I rewrote a novel twice. As usual, when I look back on Stubborn Mouths, as when I look back on pretty much everything, I see what I could have done differently or better because I'm looking at it from having already written it and, in having written it, figured out how to tell that story.
What sets it apart is I still get comments from people telling me it's the first place they've seen themselves reflected back, or heard themselves in what I wrote. Even ten years later. Part of me feels like that shouldn't be the case, how the media landscape should be better by now; another part of me understands I was able to give someone something they needed, and to cherish being able to do that.
I didn't set out to achieve such a thing, and it's what I've accomplished. If that's its legacy, that's something I can be happy with and I can remain proud of having written such a story.
Here's to ten years.
Ten years ago, I posted Stubborn Mouths: Humans in Translation. It didn't come out of listening to the song, and a lot of it came from listening to it and trying to figure out exactly how it made me feel, so when I went to write, I'd know what I was trying to chase down.
I've written a lot in the last ten years, mostly because I never stopped for very long. I've picked up new fandoms, found my way back to old ones, and spent a lot of time pursuing original projects. I've written other fics with more sophisticated plots, and fics that do more with incomplete points of view and narrative perspective to develop a sense of character within the fic framework. I've done challenges, collaborations, and experimental pieces to see if I could pull those stories off. I rewrote a novel twice. As usual, when I look back on Stubborn Mouths, as when I look back on pretty much everything, I see what I could have done differently or better because I'm looking at it from having already written it and, in having written it, figured out how to tell that story.
What sets it apart is I still get comments from people telling me it's the first place they've seen themselves reflected back, or heard themselves in what I wrote. Even ten years later. Part of me feels like that shouldn't be the case, how the media landscape should be better by now; another part of me understands I was able to give someone something they needed, and to cherish being able to do that.
I didn't set out to achieve such a thing, and it's what I've accomplished. If that's its legacy, that's something I can be happy with and I can remain proud of having written such a story.
Here's to ten years.
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