![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAbbreviated Reading Meme.
What you are reading now?
Unraveled by Courtney Milan - almost done or rather 79% of the way through on the Kindle. It's interesting - the writer has surprised me. All of the conflict is internal and regarding the hero's coping mechanisms and how they aren't necessarily working any longer. The hero, Smite Turner, had a rather traumatic childhood (actually that's an understatement), and he's coped with it by shutting himself off from people and devoting himself entirely to seeking Justice for others - to ensure no one goes through what he did. Apparently he'd gone to get help from the town elders at the age of twelve, informing them that if they didn't intervene with his mother soon - something horrible would happen, since his mother was mad. They shrugged him off or laughed him off and then told his mother, who flew into a rage and tried to kill him by locking him in a cellar which flooded. His brother rescued him and they lived off the streets in Bristol (not all that well), until the eldest brother returned from India and rescued them. Prior to this, his twin sister died of an infected rat bite, which his mother refused to treat. Instead of seeking to stop the nightmares, he encourages them - because it reminds him of what he survived. He tells the heroine that if he becomes complacent, if he doesn't devote himself to Justice than he's a failure and everything that happened is meaningless. He copes by devoting himself completely to the cause of social justice.
Rather interesting character, and a bit of a contradiction in terms - he comes across as cold and intimidating, but in reality is quite kind and generous. The heroine doesn't treat him with kid clothes, is bluntly honest, and when she runs into difficulties - instead of being an idiot and lying to him and trying to handle it herself - she tells him about it. As she states: "You requested that I be honest with you. So I figured it's common sense really. I'll just tell you everything, as opposed to waiting around for it to blow up in my face."
Normally in these books, there's a huge misunderstanding, and it's all neatly wrapped up in a bow. But Milan's books tend to be more interested in the internal issues of the characters - and how they often get in their own way.
2. Fandom in early part of 21st Century and Now I am very glad that I was heavily involved in fandom between 2002-2010 or early part of the 21st Century. Because I don't think it would work that well for me now. Tumblr, buffy forums, twitter are sites that just don't work for me - they aren't as conducive to the type of fandom interaction that I craved - which was psuedo scholarly discussions of the text interspersed with fun bits and spoilery speculation. Twitter is really nothing more than sound bites or snarky quips or links with a # (hashtag aka pound sign) attached, reminds me of chat rooms. Facebook and Tumblr are more for reposting or posting of pics, and there's a lack of privacy or authorship, also hard to follow discussion threads. You can't reply directly to people, so much as just add to the thread. Same deal with Buffy Forums which is similar to Bronze Beta or Whedonesque - where again - you just add to the thread...not directly to anyone on the thread. Voy forums permitted you to respond directly to each individual, sort of like Live Journal does. So you could ignore certain people in the thread and discuss with others. This is more conducive for an analytical or scholarly discussion of the text.
It's less chatty and so much easier to follow. Plus you could post meta within the thread - without character limitations. I could post a 50 page on Voy, complete with footnotes. It was that cool.
I was a meta writer who hated formatting. Back in the day, Voy was sort of perfect, because it was simple in its formatting structure - just basic HTML. You had threads. You posted a thread. It got responses. It went to archive. People requested permission to repost your meta on new sites. Meta didn't have the benefit of nifty photos or icons, you had to rely solely on the writing. So - what you saw more of was scholarly writing, reposting of dialogue, and quotes. Less vids, GIF's and photos. Fanfiction was often on a separate forum or board and discussed separately from meta.
In some forums it wasn't permitted. This worked for me. It's was bare bones.
Also easier to find stuff and easier to avoid the cranks, trolls, and nutjobs.
Oh you still ran into them, but....it was somehow easier and better moderated.
Also, there's something to be said for being involved in a fandom for a show that is airing live, and the content has yet to be aired. Lots of speculating. You don't know where it is going. And the creators will often prove your interpretation wrong. For example? I remember one viewer wrote a lengthy essay on why Spike would not seek a soul and get his chip out. Or when he got his soul, he'd come back evil. Another argued that Spike would never attempt to rape Buffy - that couldn't happen. These essays lead into interesting threads on how we interpret characters, and text. It's not that this stuff doesn't still exist, it's just harder to find and the discussions harder to follow. While LJ and Dreamwidth provide a good forum for both - they aren't quite as open or public, since you tend to be relegated to one person's journal or a heavily moderated forum. So harder to find. Voy forums were moderated but not quite that heavily.
Also there were less sites and less choices, so more traffic on the active ones. Your meta tended to hit a broader audience than I think it does on lj. You didn't have to pimp or market it.
Mileage most likely varies on this. If you are into fanart, vids, GIF's or fanfiction you may prefer the current model - which is more conducive to showing those items. But if you were a meta writer like I was, you may have preferred the prior model? Or not.
3. Fanfic vs. Romantic Fiction?
Oddly, there's a lot of former fanfic writers writing romantic fiction and vice versa. Or a lot of romance novelists who started out as fanfic writers. I've begun to pick up on it here and there. Mainly because I've read a lot of both, and the styles are familiar. It's not really all that surprising - since I think a lot of them used fanfic as a means to pick up fans and practice their style, determine what worked or didn't work. Also, the publishers of the romance genre - are more likely to publish fan-fic writers who have huge fan bases - because ready-made readership that the publisher can mine.
And..they both traverse the same tropes. Not surprising. There is a limited number of romantic story tropes after all.
The best fanfic, romantic or otherwise - in my opinion - closely followed cannon and stuck to the world that the series created, didn't go too far AU (not that I mind AU, but often writers didn't spend the time necessary to create a believable alternate world, the ones who kept to canon, ironically spent more time and energy exploring the world the series created than those who veered drastically from it spent on creating their own. Depending on the series - there was a lot stuff you could add or explore yet still remain within canon. BTVS for example was not that well-developed a world - there were a lot of gaps, a lot of room for interpretation - which made it fun to write fanfic for, while in direct contrast - I'd think Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would pose quite a few challenges because there aren't quite as many gaps or avenues.).
Everybody's Human fanfic seldom worked for me - mainly because it just felt like the writer was using the likenesses of the characters from the tv show in some existing contemporary romantic story trope - which I'd seen before. (ie. What if Buffy and Spike and Angel were all human and contestants on some reality dating show? Or what if Spike was a race car driver, Giles his Dad, and Buffy his ex-girlfriend? Or a rock singer? Basically the writer just took the characters, made them human, gave them whole new back stories and placed them in other settings to see what they'd do. Which means they aren't really the characters any longer - and the writer is sort of cheating, because they don't have to do the hard work of describing what the character looks like or other things - because hello, their readership knows the characters from the show. They've just cast the characters in these roles. It's why when you iron off the serial numbers and publish these stories - they feel a bit hollow or weak, because - the writer hasn't really developed them past what they represented on the tv series. If that makes sense? I'm having difficulties articulating it for some reason.) But AU fic that reinterprets the world or characters in another way within that world or cannon fic that stuck to the world, and just reinterpreted the world or story or in some cases flushed it out more or fic that filled in gaps in the story...was often more interesting.
Oddly these writers worked harder than the Everybody's Human writers - because a) they had to get the characters right, b) make the world convincing, not to mention stick to the rules of the world they were flushing out or reinterpreting and c) explore new aspects of the canon or story, reinterpret it, yet remain within the realm of possibility.
I've admittedly read a lot of both.
The trick in genre writing, I think, is to not get too hung up on plot. Make it about the characters - make it character driven. Otherwise...you're going to risk becoming too paint-by-numbers or boiler-plate. Because let's face it there are no original plots. Many genre novels fail by focusing too much on a convoluted plot, but a somewhat one dimensional or two dimensional hero who is described as looking a bit like Harrison Ford or Angelina Jolie. At the same time, you can't just ignore the plot. You have to work at it too. Or you fall into the opposite trap - where you basically just have characters studying their navels, and the reader has drifted off to sleep or the reader can't follow the plot or has thrown the book against the wall due to all the plot holes you can drive a truck through.
The trick in fanfic writing is ...to not get too hung up on canon or perfectly matching it. You won't. It's not possible. For one thing, everyone interprets it differently - including the original creators of it. At the same time, you shouldn't ignore it entirely - because then it's not really fanfic is it? You might as well just put in your own characters and own names on it. If you can easily switch out Kiki for Buffy...then you haven't written a fanfic on Buffy, you've written a story in which you've decided to cast Buffy as an actress in it - but she's not playing "Buffy".
I can see it now...
Writer: Hello Buffy, I have a great role for you...
Buffy: Oh, cool, what do I get to play?
Writer: You are the girl-friend of a race car driver, who you broke up with after he had a horrible accident.
Buffy: Why can't I play the race car driver?
Writer: Spike is playing that role.
Buffy: So not fair, Spike gets all the good parts. Last time he got to be the camera man and I was the contestant. Although I did like playing that FBI agent...even if I had to adapt Veronica Mars accent.
I do like the what-if scenario, obviously, but I'm always a wee bit disappointed in the execution of the Everybody's Human stories. Something falls flat or is unsatisfying. Which, I've admittedly found to be true of 98% of the Contemporary Romances that I've read. It's why I prefer the Historicals. This was also true of Fanfic - the contemporary "Everybody's Human fic" usually dissatisfied me with few exceptions, while the canon fic or fic that stuck more closely to the world that Whedon had created or at least his genre, was more satisfying. I mean there were fics that clearly went AU, such as "the Barbverse", and "Herself NYC's take on the series", but they still stuck closely enough to it - that I felt it was their interpretation of the characters and akin, at times, to reading a meta. Also their takes felt innovative. Another example? Unbridled Brunnette, Dead Soul - who created a story around Sunday and Spike, and oh, Angeria who did one post Chosen fic - all went AU at some point, it's impossible not to - really, but they stuck close enough to the script or canon that you felt as if you were seeing another angle on both the series and characters. Beer Good Foamy who doesn't write romantic fic, as far as I know, is another example of exploring the world, veering slightly from canon, yet remaining within it enough to be convincing. So too was selenak, who wrote more character centric pieces. Same with masq's "The Destroyer" fic following and exploring in depth the character of Connor. Their fic wasn't boilerplate and at times was more captivating than what you might see on the series or in novels/comics commercially published with the copyright holder's permission. Which is an odd thing to say. Because in essence, the fic that couldn't be published and that you can't just iron off the serial numbers was and is far more innovative and distinctive than the fic in which you could do just that or was permissible by copyright.
"The Everybody's All Human fic", with a few exceptions, is fairly interchangable like most Contemporary and New Adult Romances...while fics that take place in a definite world or have a mythology seem to less interchangable and stand out more in my memory. This is also oddly true of many novelizations or versions that make it past the rights holder. For some reason - the blander and less innovative the story, the more likely it will be commercially published. The riskier, and more innovative, the less likely. Ironic, isn't it? And possibly why it's hard for me to take the "push to publish" movement seriously.
What you are reading now?
Unraveled by Courtney Milan - almost done or rather 79% of the way through on the Kindle. It's interesting - the writer has surprised me. All of the conflict is internal and regarding the hero's coping mechanisms and how they aren't necessarily working any longer. The hero, Smite Turner, had a rather traumatic childhood (actually that's an understatement), and he's coped with it by shutting himself off from people and devoting himself entirely to seeking Justice for others - to ensure no one goes through what he did. Apparently he'd gone to get help from the town elders at the age of twelve, informing them that if they didn't intervene with his mother soon - something horrible would happen, since his mother was mad. They shrugged him off or laughed him off and then told his mother, who flew into a rage and tried to kill him by locking him in a cellar which flooded. His brother rescued him and they lived off the streets in Bristol (not all that well), until the eldest brother returned from India and rescued them. Prior to this, his twin sister died of an infected rat bite, which his mother refused to treat. Instead of seeking to stop the nightmares, he encourages them - because it reminds him of what he survived. He tells the heroine that if he becomes complacent, if he doesn't devote himself to Justice than he's a failure and everything that happened is meaningless. He copes by devoting himself completely to the cause of social justice.
Rather interesting character, and a bit of a contradiction in terms - he comes across as cold and intimidating, but in reality is quite kind and generous. The heroine doesn't treat him with kid clothes, is bluntly honest, and when she runs into difficulties - instead of being an idiot and lying to him and trying to handle it herself - she tells him about it. As she states: "You requested that I be honest with you. So I figured it's common sense really. I'll just tell you everything, as opposed to waiting around for it to blow up in my face."
Normally in these books, there's a huge misunderstanding, and it's all neatly wrapped up in a bow. But Milan's books tend to be more interested in the internal issues of the characters - and how they often get in their own way.
2. Fandom in early part of 21st Century and Now I am very glad that I was heavily involved in fandom between 2002-2010 or early part of the 21st Century. Because I don't think it would work that well for me now. Tumblr, buffy forums, twitter are sites that just don't work for me - they aren't as conducive to the type of fandom interaction that I craved - which was psuedo scholarly discussions of the text interspersed with fun bits and spoilery speculation. Twitter is really nothing more than sound bites or snarky quips or links with a # (hashtag aka pound sign) attached, reminds me of chat rooms. Facebook and Tumblr are more for reposting or posting of pics, and there's a lack of privacy or authorship, also hard to follow discussion threads. You can't reply directly to people, so much as just add to the thread. Same deal with Buffy Forums which is similar to Bronze Beta or Whedonesque - where again - you just add to the thread...not directly to anyone on the thread. Voy forums permitted you to respond directly to each individual, sort of like Live Journal does. So you could ignore certain people in the thread and discuss with others. This is more conducive for an analytical or scholarly discussion of the text.
It's less chatty and so much easier to follow. Plus you could post meta within the thread - without character limitations. I could post a 50 page on Voy, complete with footnotes. It was that cool.
I was a meta writer who hated formatting. Back in the day, Voy was sort of perfect, because it was simple in its formatting structure - just basic HTML. You had threads. You posted a thread. It got responses. It went to archive. People requested permission to repost your meta on new sites. Meta didn't have the benefit of nifty photos or icons, you had to rely solely on the writing. So - what you saw more of was scholarly writing, reposting of dialogue, and quotes. Less vids, GIF's and photos. Fanfiction was often on a separate forum or board and discussed separately from meta.
In some forums it wasn't permitted. This worked for me. It's was bare bones.
Also easier to find stuff and easier to avoid the cranks, trolls, and nutjobs.
Oh you still ran into them, but....it was somehow easier and better moderated.
Also, there's something to be said for being involved in a fandom for a show that is airing live, and the content has yet to be aired. Lots of speculating. You don't know where it is going. And the creators will often prove your interpretation wrong. For example? I remember one viewer wrote a lengthy essay on why Spike would not seek a soul and get his chip out. Or when he got his soul, he'd come back evil. Another argued that Spike would never attempt to rape Buffy - that couldn't happen. These essays lead into interesting threads on how we interpret characters, and text. It's not that this stuff doesn't still exist, it's just harder to find and the discussions harder to follow. While LJ and Dreamwidth provide a good forum for both - they aren't quite as open or public, since you tend to be relegated to one person's journal or a heavily moderated forum. So harder to find. Voy forums were moderated but not quite that heavily.
Also there were less sites and less choices, so more traffic on the active ones. Your meta tended to hit a broader audience than I think it does on lj. You didn't have to pimp or market it.
Mileage most likely varies on this. If you are into fanart, vids, GIF's or fanfiction you may prefer the current model - which is more conducive to showing those items. But if you were a meta writer like I was, you may have preferred the prior model? Or not.
3. Fanfic vs. Romantic Fiction?
Oddly, there's a lot of former fanfic writers writing romantic fiction and vice versa. Or a lot of romance novelists who started out as fanfic writers. I've begun to pick up on it here and there. Mainly because I've read a lot of both, and the styles are familiar. It's not really all that surprising - since I think a lot of them used fanfic as a means to pick up fans and practice their style, determine what worked or didn't work. Also, the publishers of the romance genre - are more likely to publish fan-fic writers who have huge fan bases - because ready-made readership that the publisher can mine.
And..they both traverse the same tropes. Not surprising. There is a limited number of romantic story tropes after all.
The best fanfic, romantic or otherwise - in my opinion - closely followed cannon and stuck to the world that the series created, didn't go too far AU (not that I mind AU, but often writers didn't spend the time necessary to create a believable alternate world, the ones who kept to canon, ironically spent more time and energy exploring the world the series created than those who veered drastically from it spent on creating their own. Depending on the series - there was a lot stuff you could add or explore yet still remain within canon. BTVS for example was not that well-developed a world - there were a lot of gaps, a lot of room for interpretation - which made it fun to write fanfic for, while in direct contrast - I'd think Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would pose quite a few challenges because there aren't quite as many gaps or avenues.).
Everybody's Human fanfic seldom worked for me - mainly because it just felt like the writer was using the likenesses of the characters from the tv show in some existing contemporary romantic story trope - which I'd seen before. (ie. What if Buffy and Spike and Angel were all human and contestants on some reality dating show? Or what if Spike was a race car driver, Giles his Dad, and Buffy his ex-girlfriend? Or a rock singer? Basically the writer just took the characters, made them human, gave them whole new back stories and placed them in other settings to see what they'd do. Which means they aren't really the characters any longer - and the writer is sort of cheating, because they don't have to do the hard work of describing what the character looks like or other things - because hello, their readership knows the characters from the show. They've just cast the characters in these roles. It's why when you iron off the serial numbers and publish these stories - they feel a bit hollow or weak, because - the writer hasn't really developed them past what they represented on the tv series. If that makes sense? I'm having difficulties articulating it for some reason.) But AU fic that reinterprets the world or characters in another way within that world or cannon fic that stuck to the world, and just reinterpreted the world or story or in some cases flushed it out more or fic that filled in gaps in the story...was often more interesting.
Oddly these writers worked harder than the Everybody's Human writers - because a) they had to get the characters right, b) make the world convincing, not to mention stick to the rules of the world they were flushing out or reinterpreting and c) explore new aspects of the canon or story, reinterpret it, yet remain within the realm of possibility.
I've admittedly read a lot of both.
The trick in genre writing, I think, is to not get too hung up on plot. Make it about the characters - make it character driven. Otherwise...you're going to risk becoming too paint-by-numbers or boiler-plate. Because let's face it there are no original plots. Many genre novels fail by focusing too much on a convoluted plot, but a somewhat one dimensional or two dimensional hero who is described as looking a bit like Harrison Ford or Angelina Jolie. At the same time, you can't just ignore the plot. You have to work at it too. Or you fall into the opposite trap - where you basically just have characters studying their navels, and the reader has drifted off to sleep or the reader can't follow the plot or has thrown the book against the wall due to all the plot holes you can drive a truck through.
The trick in fanfic writing is ...to not get too hung up on canon or perfectly matching it. You won't. It's not possible. For one thing, everyone interprets it differently - including the original creators of it. At the same time, you shouldn't ignore it entirely - because then it's not really fanfic is it? You might as well just put in your own characters and own names on it. If you can easily switch out Kiki for Buffy...then you haven't written a fanfic on Buffy, you've written a story in which you've decided to cast Buffy as an actress in it - but she's not playing "Buffy".
I can see it now...
Writer: Hello Buffy, I have a great role for you...
Buffy: Oh, cool, what do I get to play?
Writer: You are the girl-friend of a race car driver, who you broke up with after he had a horrible accident.
Buffy: Why can't I play the race car driver?
Writer: Spike is playing that role.
Buffy: So not fair, Spike gets all the good parts. Last time he got to be the camera man and I was the contestant. Although I did like playing that FBI agent...even if I had to adapt Veronica Mars accent.
I do like the what-if scenario, obviously, but I'm always a wee bit disappointed in the execution of the Everybody's Human stories. Something falls flat or is unsatisfying. Which, I've admittedly found to be true of 98% of the Contemporary Romances that I've read. It's why I prefer the Historicals. This was also true of Fanfic - the contemporary "Everybody's Human fic" usually dissatisfied me with few exceptions, while the canon fic or fic that stuck more closely to the world that Whedon had created or at least his genre, was more satisfying. I mean there were fics that clearly went AU, such as "the Barbverse", and "Herself NYC's take on the series", but they still stuck closely enough to it - that I felt it was their interpretation of the characters and akin, at times, to reading a meta. Also their takes felt innovative. Another example? Unbridled Brunnette, Dead Soul - who created a story around Sunday and Spike, and oh, Angeria who did one post Chosen fic - all went AU at some point, it's impossible not to - really, but they stuck close enough to the script or canon that you felt as if you were seeing another angle on both the series and characters. Beer Good Foamy who doesn't write romantic fic, as far as I know, is another example of exploring the world, veering slightly from canon, yet remaining within it enough to be convincing. So too was selenak, who wrote more character centric pieces. Same with masq's "The Destroyer" fic following and exploring in depth the character of Connor. Their fic wasn't boilerplate and at times was more captivating than what you might see on the series or in novels/comics commercially published with the copyright holder's permission. Which is an odd thing to say. Because in essence, the fic that couldn't be published and that you can't just iron off the serial numbers was and is far more innovative and distinctive than the fic in which you could do just that or was permissible by copyright.
"The Everybody's All Human fic", with a few exceptions, is fairly interchangable like most Contemporary and New Adult Romances...while fics that take place in a definite world or have a mythology seem to less interchangable and stand out more in my memory. This is also oddly true of many novelizations or versions that make it past the rights holder. For some reason - the blander and less innovative the story, the more likely it will be commercially published. The riskier, and more innovative, the less likely. Ironic, isn't it? And possibly why it's hard for me to take the "push to publish" movement seriously.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-21 08:28 pm (UTC)Could well be.
I think the key to writing a reasonable all human AU is to have the characters doing something the onscreen version could be imagined doing.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-22 01:39 am (UTC)Debating this in my own head as I write my response.
On the hand, I agree and it was what I was attempting to get at above in my dialogue between the writer and Buffy. Buffy for example would not be a race car driver or into racing, she hated driving and sucked at it. (Buffy and cars are unmixy things.)
But on the other hand...you can sort of imagine the character doing just about anything. I mean, who would have imagined Buffy being the slayer, prior to discovering she was the slayer? Part of the appeal to the series was having characters believably do the unimaginable. And a lot of what someone can or can't imagine is arguably subjective.
Also...I've seen a lot of "what if" scenarios on tv and comics. (ie. What if Buffy never came to Sunnydale - how would that change all the characters? What if Connor wasn't raised by Holtz and had a nice family? What if Buffy was just a patient in a mental ward? In X-men, they did one, in which it was What if - Jean Grey never became The Phoenix. The character completely changes, it's no longer the same character. But, the character is fully developed, and the essence of who they are is still there.
I think...the problem isn't having them do something that can't be imagined on screen, but rather being able to sell it. You can have a character do anything in a novel - as long as you can "sell" it or "justify" it to the reader or in tv, viewer. Just as you can create any world - but you have to sell it to the audience. The audience has to buy that a man can travel through time and space in what amounts to an old British Police Phone Booth, that is in reality a spaceship. Or in Buffy, Whedon carefully sold "Buffy", a tiny cheerleader who came across as sort of ditzy and clutzy on first impression, as the slayer. But how did he do it?
He used Xander and Willow to act as representatives of the audience, doubting it. And sold it to them. Did the same thing with Joyce. He even had her doubt it herself. And he made fun of the concept, as did Buffy. He took an idea that most people would considerable laughable and impossible, and managed to sell it and make the audience question themselves instead of the story.
That's the trick, I think - being able to sell it. It's not genre, it's not plot, it's how you write it, I think.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-22 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-22 03:56 pm (UTC)Brad Meltzer - for example did not sell Angel as Twilight to me, nor did Whedon. It wasn't built up well. So I found it to be ludicrous.
But, there are instances...where others have bought the set-up and I haven't. Example? 24. I was never able to buy that series set-up, where everything happened in a 24 hour period. It does not take seconds to get across LA. But other people clearly had no problem with that. So much of it is subjective, I think.