Found a fic archive... in Russian

[zimena]

I'm starting to realize how LJ itself killed much of the fun over there back when they started with their many and mostly annoying design changes. There are quite a few such changes, but this is not an anti-LJ rant, so let me just mention the one that is important for this post: They moved the interest list on profiles into a sub-section that's hidden unless you actually click on it. By doing this, they effectively killed the usefulness of that list, and I know that I had not updated mine for ages before coming here. On DW, though, the list is useful and fun like it should be, and I've been spending quite some time clicking on interests and looking at random journals that I would not have found otherwise.

Well, this is how I ended up on a random journal last night. The owner had a post about one of her fics getting translated into Russian, and she also linked to the Russian version. Even though I don't understand Russian, and even though it was a fic in a fandom I know nothing about, I still went to check out the translated version, just for the fun of seeing what it looked like. What I had NOT expected to find, was a huge fic archive in Russian, with fanfiction on everything you can possibly imagine. I mean it - games, movies, books, anime... and real person fiction about all sorts of celebrities.... it was all there. Of course I should not be surprised that such a thing exists in such an important language, but I was still a little amazed by the size and variety of it. What's more, I'm curious, so I checked for fics involving a couple of Russian singers I've listened to a lot over the years.... and well, I found both. One of them even in HUNDREDS of fics. Just now, I also checked for biathlon slash... which is there in quite a huge number as well. And let me remind you that this does not seem to exist at all in English. At least I haven't seen any such fics in English. (Well, maybe not a surprise, given that Russia is a biathlon-country, while there's no English-speaking country that can be truly classified as such. Still, it's a sport with lots of fans in many countries, so it's still surprising that Russians seem to write biathlon slash, while the rest of us... don't?)

Now, do I wish that I could speak Russian, just so I could investigate further? Yes, to some extent. On the other hand, not so much. It's hard to explain - somehow it feels good to know that things exist, but at the same time... maybe I would be disappointed if I knew that these fics are not as good as I had hoped, or if people wrote things I don't like/agree with/approve of? Don't know if that makes sense, because I'm not even sure it does to me.

Chances are that I'll go back and look at what's there, though. At least headers/pairings, as it should be possible to figure out something from there. Yes, I realize that by saying that, I'm already contradicting myself a little bit. I also realize that if I had found something like this in English, I would dive in and be ecstatic about such a huge amount of possibly interesting stuff.

Double standards, much? Yes, I see it myself, so you don't have to tell me.

Comments

[catness]

Which site is that?

Once I stumbled upon a Russian Rammstein fanfic archive (I don't remember if it was a part of a bigger archive, or a standalone site). While I greatly enjoyed some of the fics, it was also sort of depressing, thinking that I could never write like that. Russian seems to be a more expressive language than English... more fine-tuned, more choice of words and grammar, so it's harder. (Or maybe it's just because the finer points of English still escape me ;)

Btw you don't write in Norwegian either, do you?

[zimena]

It's Ficbook.

I think one's own native language always feels more expressive than a foreign language, simply because it's harder to notice all the nuances in another language. I have a sort of weird relationship with this, because I like to write in English exactly because it's easier to talk about certain topics there - certain descriptive words don't hit me as hard as if they had been in my native language. On the other hand, I sometimes miss certain words or expressions or idioms that are normal in Norwegian, but don't have a direct equivalent in English - or maybe they have, and it's just me who doesn't know about it.

One time I tried to read slash in Norwegian - between two characters from a popular children's play. The play (or actually more like series of plays centered around the same characters, because there's a new one almost every summer) is made in my hometown and played at one special place here. Lots of children here grow up being huge fans of this stuff, dress up as characters from it etc. Anyway, reading slash about it felt so strange. First, because I know how the characters speak, so I could practically hear their voices and dialects in my head. And of course.... explicit stuff in my native language feels.... much more explicit than it does in English :) Reading explicit scenes in Norwegian feels sort of vulgar and uncomfortable, while reading the exact same scene in English would more than likely be perfectly okay.

And writing in Norwegian when I cannot even read certain things in it? Nope, I don't think so :) I've never even tried, actually. Sometimes I think that my vocabulary is better in English than in Norwegian when it comes to certain topics, yet there is still that "foreign language distance" to English.

[catness]

Whoa, it *is* huge... A lot of fics on obscure subjects, too, even three on the game 2048 - imagine that! :D (And one of them is pretty good, though unfinished; and more than that, it's supposed to be a crossover with Pacman :D)

Maybe I should try to write a fic in Russian, at least as an experiment... I wouldn't know how to write explicit scenes, too, but I rarely write them anyway.

[gobtastic]

Omg, I think you may just have given me more impetus to learn Russian better and faster (I'm so slowwwwwwww...).

And yes, finally biathlon fic! It's good to know it's happening somewhere, at least. I wonder if they have any gymnastics slash... ;)

[gobtastic]

(sorry, I don't know if I can edit comments on DW, it's been so long since I used it...)

About fic in a language that's not your own... I never thought about how explicit fic would sound in a language that wasn't my mother tongue, I guess because I'm spoilt that so much fic is written in English. German I don't think I could write in, Russian perhaps (if I learnt the language well enough), because as Cat said, it's so expressive, but even so...

I feel in English. I don't know how else to describe it. Perhaps that's why explicit fic in Norwegian felt so 'close' in that way? Because it's kind of 'yours'? When I experience something, my reaction to it is in English. I know the language so well that I usually have the exact word for the exact experience, and the sound, shape and feel of that word elicits that experience right away the moment you say/see/hear it. It's an automatic reaction and a depth of language knowledge that perhaps only comes from your mother tongue? I don't know, though, as I've never learnt a language well enough, for long enough, to be able to communicate in it so proficiently as how you do in English, for example (I am in awe of your language skills, really).

It's an interesting philosophical question too that I know has had a lot written about it: how does language shape our experiences? Can I really experience something if I don't have language to express it? (of course I think so, but it's interesting to think about). Things like the sound of words, or their gender (non-English languages) even subtly affect how the things they describe are perceived. It's fascinating.

[zimena]

Yes, that's exactly it, about feeling in one's native language. I guess I never thought of how it would feel for a native English speaker to read fic in English, because for me the fact that the fic is in a different language than my own is exactly the reason I'm able to read and write about come topics without cringing and feeling uncomfortable. I guess the English-speaking me would sometimes like to tell the Norwegian-speaking me to get better at dealing with emotions, heh.

Language IS identity, though. As soon as you communicate in another language, you become a slightly different person. Of course it's less noticeable if you're not that good at the language, because you have less "nuances" available to express yourself freely, but I can at least say that it's true for me between Norwegian and English. Maybe to some extent Spanish, too (the Spanish-speaking me is a little less worried about offending others, I think. A little.)

So few people understand this, seriously.

As for whether you can experience something if you don't have a language to express it - yes, I think you can. Maybe you need language to preserve the memory of the experience better, though. I know some people think in images much more than I do, though, so maybe they would need language less for such things?

And YES about grammatical gender affecting how words are perceived. This always makes me think of German, because they have things like "das Mädchen", and to me it feels offensive because it labels girls as an "it", so to speak. Of course I realise that it's the -chen ending that makes it neuter, not the meaning of the word itself, but it still feels wrong to me.

[gobtastic]

Although I'm not really proficient enough in either German or Russian to read fic in it, I can certainly understand the distance that comes from reading something so personal that's not in your native tongue. But if you're not comfortable reading certain topics in Norwegian, that's fine I think. It's not that you need to 'get better' at anything, it's just natural. There are always some things that are too far for us, in any language. :)

That's really so true, about language being identity. It's always interesting to see how other languages deal with subjects - for instance, the old chestnut about some Inuit languages have lots of words for snow because they have so much! I remember reading a native speaking about the civil war in ex-Yugoslavia, and them saying the viciousness of the people was mirrored in the language that had so many different ways of expressing murder/killing/death. Maybe language works like a historical document that way, somehow? Sort of like a collective consciousness? I don't know what that would say about Irish Gaelic, which tends to describe things instead of naming them *insert massive eyerolling smiley and dictionary the size of a small building here* XD

I always wondered if the use of 'das' in German for girl was to try to avoid putting a gender on children, as if they were too young to need or understand it? But Junge (boy) is masculine, so perhaps not. It is a weird thing. I'd be curious to read on how English, that doesn't have gender, compares as a language and understanding, with, say, German or Spanish that does. What does the lack of gender mean? It's subtle, but when an English speaker learns a language that has gender, the gender of each noun is affected by the gender the noun takes in the English speaker's mind. It made me wonder if that happens to native speakers of a language with gender.

[zimena]

I can imagine that this would be an incentive to work on the language more, yes. It seems you are doing quite well with it, though? It makes me smile when I see you write comments in it on Instagram these days.

Also, speaking of Russian, I had a lot of negative associations to it for a long time even after cutting contact with a certain person. It's only recently that I've been able to feel "positive" about it again, the way I always did since childhood. I even did not support Russian athletes for a while because of everything that happened with you-know-what...

I think the first one I allowed myself to support again was Sergey Ustyugov during Tour de Ski (which ended in early January). It's weird how unrelated things can make a mess of one's feelings. Really.

Oh, and speaking of fic.... I found the first couple of fics I ever wrote and published online. From 2001, eeek. So, so weird to see them again. Maybe a bit embarrassing, too, heh...

[gobtastic]

I dunno, I still have to look words up all the time...perhaps I have unrealistic expectations of how good I should be, but I'm making slower progress than I did with German. But it's still quite a leap for me to even try to use the language with other people (It helps that most of the Russians I talk to on IG don't speak English much!).

I wondered if that might be the case for you (I was a little nervous about mentioning things like Russia or the language because of this - I know how much these things hurt and it's not an association that just magics away easily). I'm really glad you found a Russian sportsperson you could like and support though, that's brilliant news! I have quite a soft spot for their male biathletes, they just seem to try so hard (they're terrible at skijumping, though - I try to support them, and the Kazakhs too, who should be naturals at the sport given the territory, surely? But nah. It's embarrassing, god love them).

Squeeeeee! That must've been an amazing thing to re-read again! Did it put you right back there when you were writing it, how it felt and all? And don't be embarrassed - people grow and change, and so do writing styles. Your fic writing is always head and shoulders above others anyway, so I know it would've been fantastic even back in 2001!

[zimena]

Oh, of course you're making slower progress than you did with German. That's natural, I think, because German is a bit closer to English - there are more familiar words and therefore the language as a whole is more immediately accessible, even though the grammar is of course mad. With Russian, you have to learn a whole new alphabet first, you've got pronunciation rules that change depending on stress (and stress isn't on a fixed syllable, so you have to learn it for every word, I think?), you've got many more words that don't look like anything that's familiar from before... it's a lot of new stuff to learn, so it's not strange that it takes more time.

It's so great that you get to use it over IG, though! And yes, I think the best way to "make yourself" practice a language you don't feel so confident at - practice with people you don't have any other language in common with, so that you have to use what you know, and they can teach you things you don't.