Lots of numbers and... stuff.

[gelbes_gilatier]

First of all: Sorry for the strange formatting, but LJ went kinda haywire on me *sighs

Okay, since I'm watching the first episode of the newest season of Germany's Next Topmodel I feel like I should be doing something to keep my head from going all soft (and to keep from wanting to hit Heidi Klum and various of the participants over the head with a Duden (standard German monolingual dictionary) repeatedly) I thought I could do some little stats on my writing, like laseraphita did a while ago (once upon a time I did major in social science... we just love our statistics). My life in writing, if you like. And then I might go on and bitch a little about the German fanfiction writing scene (since it grew longer than I expected: under cut).

 

Anyway, let's start with my fanfiction.net-statics (in these statistics "A hundred ways" is counted as one multichaptered story rather than the collection of one-shots it really is... not even GNTM is boring enough I'm going to start and break up that one as well...):

• Registered on: 01-04-01 (holy... whoa!)
• Number of words submitted until 02-12-09: 608.936 (although the figure is somewhat incorrect due to the fact that the longest story I have up to date, "Haven't thought of you lately", is written together with rareb so she did contribute a fair share of those 600.000 odd words)
• Number of stories submitted: 38
• Number of fandoms I have written for: 6 (Star Wars (12), Tomb Raider (1), SG1 (2), SGA (15), BSG (6), Harry Potter (2) - does it add up? I didn't count again...)
• Numbers of finished stories: 32
• Number of one-shots: 18 (therefore number of multi-chaptered stories: 20)
• On the favorites list of: 42 members
• On the author alert list of: 58 members
• Submitted reviews: 260 (holy... really?)
• Received reviews: 793 (that's a joke, right? Am I the only one thinking that number is way too high to be true?)
• Number of favorite story entries: 134
• Number of story alert entries: 138
• Does anyone really want to know the total number of hits? (hint: Please say no, I'm too lazy to type that all into the calculator ;))

And now my fanfiktion.de stats (although all of the stories there are essentially translations of the stories posted on ff.net... and the stuff about the "Hundred ways" applies here as well):

• Registered on: 07-22-06
• Number of words submitted until 02-12-09: 363.649 (this time they're all mine, since I never translated HTOYL)
• Number of stories submitted: 23
• Number of fandoms I have written for: 4 (Star Wars (5), SG1 (2), SGA (15), BSG (1))
• Numbers of finished stories: 21
• Number of one-shots: 8 (therefore number of multi-chaptered stories: 15)
• On the favorites list of: 3 members (where went the fourth, huh?)
• On the author alert list of: unfortunately, ff.de doesn't tell you that... bastards.
• Submitted reviews: 24
• Received reviews: 210 (and stagnating... where the hell is everyone?
• Number of favorite story entries: nope, ff.de doesn't tell me that.
• Number of story alert entries: see above.
• Number of hits in total (yep, that's something they tell you...): 9904

 Oh well... quite a nice set of numbers, isn't it? And what does it tell us? Probably that I spend way too much time on writing... or rather, way too much time on writing the wrong stuff. I should be writing CVs, resumés, some important political papers (or at least I feel like that because everyone else in my professional environment seems to write them... yep, everyone is very important in politics)... you get the picture. How does one translate the overbounding energy one has for writing stories (and not even real stories, like my mum likes to point out to me every now and then) into overbounding energy for writing some really witty, brilliant, convincing stuff that will get me a job I might actually like (BTW, the Foreign Office thing? Didn't work out. Not that I hadn't put much hope on it anyway, but... well)?

Anyway... bitching on the German fanfiction writing scene. Oh yeah. Reason why I come up with that now, out of the blue? Well, I made the mistake of looking up some profiles on ff.de's lists of most active reviewers (seriously, there are people who write over 300 reviews a month... and here I thought I was putting my time to strange use...). And... holy cow. Why are so many people allowed to abuse the German language in such a horrible fashion? Why are so many teenagers unable to use correct grammar and spelling, not mentioning having at least a bit of readable style? And I'm only talking about their profiles here, I didn't even read their stuff.

It seriously made me wonder how I wrote when I was their age. Probably just as horrible, but at least I was already 18 when I discovered the horrors joys of ff.net (BTW, that was even before they introduced the neat chaptering feature... back then you had to post each chapter individually [/old woman]) and didn't make the rest of the world suffer from my first attempts at writing. Is it just me or is the average age of writers (and therefore, sorry, the average quality of stories) declining more and more? Am I a terrible snob when I think that people shouldn't be allowed to publish before they're 18 (honestly, 2 out of 3 teenaged writers are simply unable to learn to distance themselves from their stories enough that they don't take criticism personally - I did betaing for teenagers myself and I have to say... never again. NEVER again)?

And why the hell do I get the feeling that it's worse in the German speaking writing scene than in the English speaking writing scene when I do much more English reading (in fact... it's a very huge compliment if I can really bring myself to read German fanfiction... there's just something about the vast majority of stories that makes me... cringe very badly)? Oh, and Tokio-Hotel-fanfiction? All kinds of wrong. I mean... listening to Tokio Hotel is already a sign for a very deranged mind, but... writing them? Just... no (like, quite frankly, all RPF-fiction). Call me biased and narrow-minded and all kinds of other nasty things, but I just can't bring myself to tolerate these follies. And don't get me started on the sheer amount of "Twilight"-fanfiction.

I should probably just stop looking up the profiles on ff.de, because they don't equal train wrecks. They equal plane crashes. Into housing areas. Well, most of them, that is. What is it with masses of smilies in them and lots of stupid greetings to other users no one is interested in... and why do so many people give away so much info about them freely and without thinking about who might find it? Half the people there I want to whack over the head for publishing all that stuff. Well... at least half the people.

And what is it with female teenagers and m/m slash? What the hell would make any self-respecting female teenager want to read stories where women simply don't happen? Don't get me wrong, I'm not homophobe IRL (seriously, I'm not), but I don't get it why any woman would want to read stories where women are essentially dispensable (which is why this "study" made me want to smack the author a good one - seriously, what's feminist about writing women out of a story.. as a woman?). I just... don't see it *sighs Did I mention I'm narrow-minded? Maybe that's the whole reason.

Oh well... I should really work on the accepting side of my personality. Life would be much easier if I was better at not giving a damn, I guess, as sad as it is.

Oh, and could someone please keep me from listening to James Blunt's "Carry you home"  and writing when I'm not quite my usual bitchy moody cheerful self? Thank you. I only end up writing deathfics (before breakfast, mind you) and that's not a good thing (although the story in itself... ah well, that's something the reviewers have to decide).