Our Girl and Captain James Discussion Thread Vol XII

[icemistOBE]

Feel free to join in as we discuss all things Our Girl and Captain James related.

The CJ Collective "Sophisticated Silliness"

Honorary Members of The CJ Collective:
Ben Aldridge
Tony Grounds
Lacey Turner
Cast & Crew of Our Girl

Also home to these amazing fan fiction authors-

www.fanfiction.net/u/6318354/CJCollective
m.fanfiction.net/u/6300867/Paintedcherryblossoms
m.fanfiction.net/u/6345258/LolaGirl14
www.fanfiction.net/u/4566477/Itsembarrasing
www.fanfiction.net/u/6304858/Toffeecrisp
www.fanfiction.net/u/6259428/Pinerug
www.fanfiction.net/u/1390374/jenmc
www.fanfiction.net/u/6329437/Ski-dreamer
www.fanfiction.net/u/6204205/Shazbo

Painted - that is soooooooooooooooooo funny!!

That is brilliant painted love it! Giggling away to myself! Hee hee!!!

I seriously can't believe the links that icemist put up are for real. Hugging the queen... Really??? I scanned through quickly, but just had to have a look. It just reaffirms what amazing FF writers we have here on MN.

ilove i would love it if you could reserve "that" table at Bailbrook. I'm too excited for you!

I had a giggle today at work as I was asking if we had any desk calendars, the girls said they don't usually have them as they use the calendar on the computer. I made some stupid remark about preferring a desk top one and suggested that perhaps I could bring in one of my own!!!!! Problem is, it is someone else's desk when I'm not in. I wonder if they would appreciate a Vista print CJ one??? It would certainly be a way to bring OG up in conversation :)

Really busy today, and then when I got in DH asked if I would do his invoicing.... And now just finished the pile of ironing. Glamorous old life I lead.

Morning... Visual update from woof towers

painted that's brilliant! Maybe we should all have a cut out CJ to place on our own background/scene. Does anyone remember "Fuzzy Felt"?

Well, I woke in the night having had a BA dream. It was BA not CJ. I was desperately trying to remember the dream when I went back to sleep but I don't remember so much this morning! It was something to do with an interview or casting. But all I remember is being introduced to him and he was wearing burgandy slim fit trousers with a burgandy roll neck jumper and burgandy leather bomber jacket! That outfit could be possibly worse that that in Reign!!

Thanks rich have writers block with FF at the moment too much going on in RL cluttering my mind so channelling my "creativity" into silliness to relieve the stress

Poor CJ. Painted very good! If he looks worn out, I wonder what cjwoof must look like!!!

Over to you cjwoof to fill in the blanks

Morning
Finally got out of bed about 15 mins ago. I love mum being here

Sorry you've got writers block painted anything we can help with?

Has CJ escaped been allowed to go cjwoof?

Klipdoctor has posted another chapter but check out his author note at the very end....

New zombie chapter too .. Now I need the kids to go to school ... Oh hang on, half term, bother, have to save till late!
(I do love having the kids home, but they dont half get in the way of my parallel life!!)

Nice pictures ice, need a dose of drooling this morning!

Zombie chapter bloody brilliant. SPO is the nuts. No doubt about that.

I gave up on Klipdoctor after his last rant and have to say I just read the comments at the end of the latest chapter. Perhaps if he didn't take himself so seriously we might engage more with him as a writer.

I watched Broadchurch last night and seriously in that courtroom was waiting for King Antoine to come swaggering in. What have I done????

Jo on twitter put this pic on and I thought it might be needed for the AGM!!

New zombie chapter too .. Now I need the kids to go to school ... Oh hang on, half term, bother, have to save till late!
(I do love having the kids home, but they dont half get in the way of my parallel life!!)

Nice pictures ice, need a dose of drooling this morning!

Oops sorry ... poster twice ... Littlie trying to pay Cinderella while I'm typing!

Ok ok you've forced my hand (at least that's what CJ said last night). Now I've squeezed every ounce out of him I've bundled him up in an old sack and thrown him out the back of my Mini Metro released him back to Brize Nor-hun. No need to worry, he's still got the pencil, just not much lead left in it today. He said he was back off to Afghan as it was less of a war zone than Woof Towers. Dunno why he should say that - I had a lovely time

cjwoof sounds like he doesn't need decompression so much as total repumping. Hope he isn't suffering from PTSD - Post traumatic sex disorder. Will he suffer from flashbacks, "OMG! Not the reverse swivel again... Please please can't we just do missionary?"

I am in compete disbelief at klipdoctor's latest author note. So, he doesn't give a toss for his core fans (the 25 who leave the reviews) presumably.

I know I should probably not say this and keep myself out of it altogether in relation to Klipdoctor and will probably regret this. To be fair to him he has been very nice and supportive to me and I do think he is a very good writer who clearly works very hard on his stories and sets himself high standards - I don't think anyone would deny that he's the most prolific of the OG FF writers and he's taken a professional approach to what he does - sincerely, well done to him!

However, I have to say that if I was getting 20-25 reviews per chapter I'd be delighted! I don't usually get that many and seldom have (this is not a plea by the way - no sobbing from me!). I know what I write doesn't appeal to everyone because its not mainstream and getting increasingly AU but that's fine by me. Firstly and most importantly I write it because I want to. That's what you should always bear in mind - you have to like what you're doing. If other people like it and read it that's a bonus. I know that I have a regular number of people who read the chapters even if they don't review. To be fair I've looked at a lot of FF's and haven't reviewed myself and that's the case for the majority who read it. The readership is steady and that's what counts as far as knowing if people enjoy it and want to carry on reading it. (You could publish a book and have less people read it).

That said, when I update the end of my story this time it will very probably be the last OG fic I write simply because if I wrote any more I know I'd want to start writing about other minor characters in my AU world and I'd just disappear too far beyond the original and fall off the edge of an abyss!! It certainly won't have anything to do with how many people reviewed it.

Oh rhubarb I don't mind at all if you veer off and write about the other characters in your story; I just know I love your writing and you're far too good a writer to stop! Presumably, there must be somewhere else you can put your stories if you feel they've departed too far from OG territory? I'd be so sad if I were never to read any more of your fabulous fiction.

Hope that didn't sound like a rant! - The summary version is basically, you should enjoy what you're doing and be grateful if anyone likes it!

Hopefully back to all the silliness now! I suppose you'll be off on a recuperative holiday now cjwoof!

orphan you're very kind as always and I appreciate it. The reason I commented rather than keeping it zipped again was just because I couldn't believe someone would say those things to their readers. Based on what I said however, I suppose I should say damn it all, I'll just keep writing about Bella and my made up Tom and stick it on OG FF anyway! But I do honestly think to be fair to an OG FF site the stories do need to include the main characters. Its the same as us asking Jen to write about RL Chris. FF does have a sister site which takes original stories but they couldn't include any FF characters for obvious reasons. Not sure about that.

I think that you've put it very well Rhubarb.

I do have some sympathy, he does seem to put a lot of work into his writing, and he is being honest about what kind of barometer he's using to judge the audience feedback. As with Rhubarb, I don't expect that sort of response per chapter either, but I do have an idea of the number of views/readers I seem to get.

I suppose it's about what he values about what he's doing. There is a lot of pleasure in thinking up a story, working out a plot and finding a way to put it across. But if that were the only pleasure no one would ever publish anything. There's a pleasure in sharing your work, and in (hopefully positive) feedback, but if you feel that's waning you might not feel motivated to finish.

I should say I haven't really enjoyed his last story and stopped reading it a few chapters ago. Partly it's a taste thing, I find them quite long and slow moving, but also because I'm writing my own at the moment I'm rather selective about what I read, (and this is going to sound pompous, sorry) because I have my version of Molly & Charles in my head and I don't want to be thrown off by reading someone else's.

I've just read klipdoctor's notes. I like his stories in the main and he writes well but I do think he's a bit of a diva. He's not some well known author and there are others doing the OG ff (and we all know most of them are on here) who rival him. I think it's a pity if he stops this particular ff just because he's not getting lots of pats on the back every 2 minutes. I fully endorse what Rhubarb has said.

CJwoof I do hope you've enjoyed yourself. You must be worn out. I think you are a second Cynthia Payne on the quiet!

Gosh, I'm really behind on the FF, I haven't managed to read anything in the last few days. But reading through your comments I can only add that I feel very honoured to be able to read the FF stories, especially those written by our wonderful MN authors. I have been so captivated by all yiur writing, it's almost gone beyond OG. I am enjoying the stories whether they are about CJ, his brother, Molly or sister or the bloke down the road!

You are all wonderful :)

Pixie I agree that you have to keep your own version of Molly & Charles in your mind, there's nothing pompous about saying that. Reading lots of other FF while you're trying to write your own is distracting. The main problem with writing FF is that you are effectively putting your version alongside 200 + other versions on the same subject with the same characters - I'm trying to think of an equivalent outside of FF and I can't really. Although there have been stories published that take existing characters - presumably with some sort of copyright approval. You can obviously pick up thousands of romantic novels or detective stories in a bookshop but they all have something different about them. Its hard to find different angles based on a series that only had 5 episodes. There's so much more material in a long series of films or books.

As for the enjoyment angle, of course, it's great to get nice feedback and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I like nice comments - who doesn't? But I don't judge it solely by how many and clearly that matters to some writers. I do still get satisfaction from actually writing and completing the story.