temris

It's not news that to the mainstream eye, fanfiction is usually thought to be either just porn, or Mary Sue self-inserts -- which is of course "so cringe". And therefore, whatever is written there is automatically bad. The other day, someone retweeted a TikTok user's post, mocking fanfiction readers for thinking that there can be very good written sentences in fanfiction, and quotes were filled with people pointing to the "worst examples" in the replies of OP's TikTok.

This has been a long discourse that I think has gone through enough talking points, so it's tiring to see it resurface almost every few months. What I've seen, though, it's people who do not create hold this belief that published (non-indie) work is the only kind of work that has any sort of literary value; and this automatically makes fanfiction, in their eyes, lesser. I feel like this is part of a result where every piece of media they consume is curated by either following through classics only -- not particularly bad in itself -- or just picking whatever is trending; and instead of trying to understand why they're considered a classic or a good piece of work, they equate being put on a higher regard to it being popular. (I guess this is a problem that we can see in other fields as well?)

Majority of the people in the fandom spaces were supportive, of course. We have to remember that this is just a fan space and none of the authors of these transformative works are trying to write the next classic, so there's an expectancy of mediocrity. And when the writing is above such level, it piques interest.

I also think this kind of outlook, the looking down of "fanfiction prose" is a part of the way people view some sort of art space I feel as quite pretentious. It just never bodes well with me --- that kind of huge paragraphs with long descriptive sentences, filled with the thesaurus equals of usual adjectives just for the sake of sounding literary (don't know if that's the right word exactly in English); rather than trying to make a good story. (It was one of the reasons why I couldn't read Pandora by Anne Rice when I picked it up this year, but shh.) This is something that repulses me especially in Turkish literature where every writer who does that is immediately seen as the next big thing. (Don't even get me started on the book titles...)

I feel like the mocking was halfly done as a reaction to this pretentiousness, which I can see their POV too partially. But in contrast to published space, nearly every fanfiction is written for the sake of the author themselves anyway, so there has never been the need to please anyone with their high-spoken language. What irritates me (and most of the QRTs I've seen) is when these people think lines in the same wavelength are actually good when they're by traditionally done authors.

Maybe it's something that's been said a million times, but even a self-insert story can be a classic to their eyes when the critiques say so --- say for example, MC gets to isekai-d, along with their favorite man from Antiquity and travel together... It's only a literary masterpiece if the MC self-insert is Dante, because why?

There's a reason why this example has been given many times, because most people don't even view it as fanfiction... Then where exactly do we draw the line?

Uzun zamandır bir kitabı okurken bu kadar sinirlenmemiştim. Yapmayı en çok sevdiğim aktivitelerden biri olan kitap okumayı bana zehir eden bu kitabı bitirmeden bırakırdım ama maalesef aldığım bir ders için bitirmek zorundaydım.

Neresinden başlamalıyım, onu bile bilmiyorum. Çünkü kitabın kendisi de karmakarışık. Ama her şeyin başı bence yazardan başlıyor: Yazar ve onun bildiklerini gösterme çabası. Örneklemede hiçbir sorun yok, ne derler işte, anlatımı zenginleştiren öğeler vs. ama dakika başı, her cümlede bunu yapıp devam eden cümlelerde, paragraflarda HATTA BÖLÜMLERDE bile buna kalkışması bende kusma hissiyatı uyandırdı. Geçiyorum, geçiyorum; hala aynı konudayız. YETER YAHU, ANLADIK. Bir iki sayfa değil, bazen yirmi sayfa geçtiği halde bir adım ilerlemiyor hikaye. NEDEN YANİ ????? NEDEN? Mesela Nihade kokularla uğraşıyor diye İKİ BÖLÜM (hatta belki daha fazla) boyunca hangi koku neden çıkar, nereden gelmiştir vs. BUNLARI ANLATIYOR. YAHU BİRKAÇ PARAGRAF YETERDİ, ANLADIK ARAŞTIRMA YAPMIŞSIN YAZARKEN.

Üstelik de biçimi de farklı değil. Sürekli. Vurgu. İçin. Böyle. Yazmaya gerek yok!!!! (ALLAHIM DAHA DEMİN BİTİRDİM KİTABI SİNİRLERİM HALA ÜZERİMDE.) Virgül kullan çok istiyorsan yani, sana bir lütuf verilmiş virgül gibi, KULLAN İŞTE SANKİ PARA ÖDÜYORSUN VİRGÜLE.

KONUSUNUN NE OLDUĞUNA DA KARAR VEREBİLMİŞ DEĞİL. Önce istiyor bir karakter üzerinden ilerlemek, başlıyor isimsiz yeniçeriyi anlatmaya. (AMA ANLATAMIYOR, çünkü dediğim gibi tarihi olaylara benzetmekten, örnekler verip bilgisini göstermekten KARAKTERİ OLUŞTURMAYI UNUTMUŞ. İsmi geçen hiçbir “karakter”in, karakteri yok çünkü! HİÇBİRİNİN YOK. Hepsi sadece “isminden” ibaret. Yok Nihade’yi seviyormuş, aşıkmış – ki aşk da değil hissettiği, o ayrı konu.) Sonra gidiyor, kronolojik olarak Osmanlı’nın düşüşüne girip yeniçerilerin lağvedilmesine dönüyor işleyiş. Her bölüm aynı çizgiden devam edecek diye bir şey yok da, yaptığı şekil de aşırı düzensiz. Cilt olmasa birlikte durmayacak kitap.

Bu tutarsızlık biçimsel de gösteriyor kendini: Başlarda eski kelimeleri, eski tamlamaları kullanmaya çalışıyor yazar; sonra vazgeçiyor, modern kelimelere dönüyor. Bunu batılılaşmaya falan gönderme olarak yaptığını hiç zannetmiyorum, sadece DİĞER HER ŞEY GİBİ bunda da kararlılık sağlayamıyor.

AMAÇ NE?? AMAÇSIZ BİR KİTAP BU. Bize bir şey öğretmek ise, yeni öğrendiğim belki bir iki şey vardır ki bu da aşırı alakasız konulardandı, en fazla “trivia” olur yani. Yok, bu daha çok “character study” ise O DA YOK Kİ İŞTE DEDİM YA, KARAKTERİN KENDİSİ YOK ÇÜNKÜ!! HİÇBİR ŞEY YOK BU KİTAPTA!!! İnsanda oluşturduğu tek bir his var, o da kaybolan zamana duyduğum hüzün. Öyle ki bu hüzün, okurken sinirlenip bu yazıyı yazdığım zaman bahsederim, dediğim diğer düşünceleri bile unutturdu şu an.

SORMAK İSTEDİĞİM TEK ŞEY VAR, HOCAM NİYE BU KİTABI OKUTTUNUZ YANİ?

(crossposted from my goodreads)

As we come closer each day to the last day of this year, I want to make a different post where I collect my fav posts, things etc. about football this year in one entry. Idk if I'll continue making this each year, maybe every three months or something. Why? Because my phone storage is in a bad situation all the time and I want to relieve it a little bit, but these things are funny to reminiscence from time to time. Later on, it'll be a nice memory (hopefully not many of them will get deleted, bc I couldn't embed the videos from Twitter, and I'm not going to try to download them -- I don't have time!)

( warning! too much content )

( galatasaray ucl run )

( türkiye national matches )

( other stuff )

I seem to have lost some from my collection, but oh well. Here's to hoping we'll have better news next year in the UEL and the league :) Happy new year everybody.
PS. I might add some more stuff before the year ends here, since today was the draws for the UEL matches for Galatasaray.

The year is 2015, it's the height of my Star Wars obsession. I can't wait for the movie to come out, and since there's been 10 years of no mainstream movie that came out since ROTS, the fandom is at its least active era - the ones that still do care are there mostly for Clone Wars series. So what's a girl to do who loves the original most?

To satiate my thirst, I read every single book I could get my hands on, started TCW even if it wasn't my cup of tea, and tried to play any game my potato PC could play. I still remember my joy when I stumbled upon KotOR 2 in a store out of nowhere - that was the first time I ever bought myself a physical game.

I'm not sure if I played the Old Republic games later TFA came out, but I wanted to play even more Star Wars games. I mentioned it before in this blog too that I religiously played the LEGO games too. I've never been into FPS games that much, but the SW brainrot was so strong that I even tried them out (for like 20 minutes before I realized I couldn't get used to old school controls of the games of yore - the ones made for MS-DOS, man. I was DESPERATE desperate.)

So I see this game called "The Force Unleashed" and see that it's a hack-and-slash action game. I wanted to play it so bad, and that need only grew more as I realized that there was no way my potato PC could run it.

Many years have passed by and I'm now on my 3rd computer I've used. It's finally something I am satisfied with and I am so thankful that I've got to play so many amazing games I've passed on many years ago simply because I didn't have the means to try my luck with them. And finally, The Force Unleashed had its turn.

I'm still super big on Star Wars, but mostly the ones I enjoyed for years. Most of the new content wasn't my cup of tea - that's something I'm having trouble with any fandom I'm in. So my dislike about this game certainly isn't a part of this.

I don't even know what to say. From the start of the game, I was like... "Huh, so this was the game I hyped myself too much for, huh?"

Listen, back then I just saw those images where you are able to don a lightsaber and do cool force stuff and I was MESMERIZED LMFAO. I thought it would be amazing to freely control your character like that, when the closest thing I've got to do that was in KotOR, but since it's a turn-based game, it certainly wouldn't feel the same way for sure, I told myself.

Here I am thinking, what to say about this game? It was just very painfully average that I just finished it, to finish it. I'm not the one to hang too much on graphics, if there's nothing game breaking about it, I'm fine. Although the facial expressions really made me chuckle sometimes. Character designs for the new characters are fine for the most part, but Juno's friggin boob window as an Imperial pilot made me "ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh" so bad. We've really come a long way, guys. It made me realize that because if your game was to have a female character there was 99% chance that they would be sexualised, or in her case, designed for the male gaze. Worst part about it is, the Imperials are known for discipline and the strict rules! WERE YOU GUYS THAT DESPERATE FOR SOME BOOBS ISTG.

There was almost 0 original soundtrack made for this game. I've only heard two. That's right, only TWO. The rest were completely pulled from the movie soundtracks. Since I LOVE SW music, I was okay with it but like... why? Why wouldn't you just compose some new music for it?

That also brings me to another issue nitpick I have. I feel like the game had some moments of fanservice that just made me roll my eyes. It wasn't anywhere near the level of fanservice we are getting lately from Disney, mostly from the likes of Filoni and co., but it was still meeeeh.

That word describes this entire game, just MEH. I guess I still need to give credit for making me feel the most intense emotions during my playthrough. There is one section with a star destroyer that made me SO ANGRY that I really have no memory of another game that made me that mad, ever. (And I'm actually pretty bad at video games in general, so making mistakes, having to replay a part 365830 times is nothing new to me. The thing that gets me angry is the unability to skip non-cutscene dialogue parts and the animations that play, etc. Those things combined together is something to get mad for, okay?) That part was unbearable for the reason that the throw controls are DOGSH-T and made the game so much worse.

I'm happy that it's finally finished because I wouldn't touch this game again ever with a ten-foot pole tbh. I still have so many other games I wanna play anyway.

Hello...?
I didn't forget updating here ever, don't worry my lil journal. I've just been sooo busy, as always. Time management is a big problem for me.
I've finished my zine. YAY! It's one of the biggest accomplishments of my life I guess >< I feel content with it. The only problem for me is the expensive price tag. I wish I could have charged less but with the ever changing dollar exchange rates and the shipping prices, I had no other choice :/ I'm surprised even that many people have bought it. I just hope they all receive their copies without any hassle.

Next up: What have I been upto?

Mostly, I'm having trouble with installing back my old programs. I tried using a more recent version of PS but I always experienced bugs so in the end I said I should just continue with CS6. But even it doesn't work properly anymore!! For some reason -__- I don't know what to do anymore.

And... I haven't been able to play any video games I enjoyed. :( I mean, I loved playing Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but I've always played this series with their PC ports. People recommended I go with the PS2 version for this but playing with a controller is making me insane!! I am very bad at targeting with a controller so I trapped myself in the last level... I will try finishing it sometime (at least that's what I've been telling myself for like two months lmao).

After taking break from that, I finished Metal Gear Rising. It was... okay. I feel like it's very overrated. I knew what I was getting into and I have no problem with hack and slash games, in fact I enjoy most of them. Devil May Cry has always been fun mostly. And I also loved the fact that they still integrated some parts where you can pass with full stealth, especially with the cardboard box - my love! ^^ I had problems with the story (as I always do with Metal Gear games, lmao) but since Raiden is one of my favorite characters, I guess it bothered me a lot more than it did during other games. (I mean like. The problems I have with the story in the previous installments barely concern my faves, like Solid Snake. Except for maybe MGS4?? lol) I really liked some of the fights, like the Monsoon fight and the MG Excelsus looked pretty rad. But some of the fights were weird - like I think I was doing something wrong during the second encounter with MG Ray at the very start. But whatever. I'm done thinking about that game! I will try to erase it from my memory in the future lol.

Now, I'm trying to finish Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. This is probably one of my biggest disappointments after Omori, because I've waited so long to be able to play them. I mean, Fallen Order isn't inherently bad, but I expected so much more I guess. That's on me completely. It just makes me want to play KotOR again. :D I will try to write a seperate post on it soon when (if...) I finish the game.

I also installed Cities: Skylines and that was another disappointment. I thought it looked very fun when I watched CallMeKevin play it but... maybe it's because I barely played it (around 3 hours or something). Hopefully I can get the fun I looked for in the future.

I guess that's about it. So now I'm trying to finish a Jack/Daniel moments compilation video lol! See ya!