~~ it's all about the porn, man.
Feb. 24th, 2004 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI write porn. That's what I do, right?
See, two guys were talking behind me on the bus about what they did-- they were art majors. One was a painter and the other was a sculptor (actually, I think he had a sculpture concentration in a Studio Art major while planning to be a programmer as a life goal, but hey). Kindred spirits, all that, right.
I guess if one actually asked me what -I- did, I'd say, "I write porn". Or at least, that'd be truer than most things. I mean, it's not even "artsy" porn-- it's most definitely intended to be hot. And it's fanfiction. If I called it "art", quite a number of people would just laugh, wouldn't they? But hey, I think so. I'm an artist, even if there's no actual proof.
Roughly speaking, it seems like there are 3 categories of fiction: a) popular fiction-- written for entertainment purposes (porn, horror stories, detective stories, a good number of adventure/violence stories, humor, etc); b) didactic fiction-- written to express a philosophical thesis or to make some point about life and/or the world (myths, some fairy-tales, family & growing-up stories, a lot of love-stories, some historical novels, fables, Ayn Rand, etc); c) interpretive fiction-- written to transmit a certain slant or expansion on "the hard facts" as the writer sees them (some people would put fanfiction here by default).
Inevitably, of course, all these get really confused and mixed together until you can't really separate them at all in practice. But... for some reason, I did feel chagrined when I saw this long essay all about how Gundam Wing (the show) is a victim of "fan rape". Basically, 'cause everyone's writing everyone as OOC and that just... hurts the "artistry" of the show somehow. Dude, that's just freakin' funny.
"Art" isn't a separate thing, an inviolate thing that's confined to the source material of some fanfic. It's a sacred thing, okay, but... everything is art. Fanfiction is art. Breathing can be an art if you do it with -intent-. I've taken whole classes based around the idea of asking "what is art", and there's never been an actual settled-on answer, but I think I can easily say that fanfiction is an art without regard to its adherence to its source or its degree of in-characterness. That's just silly.
Most people would say that "didactic fiction" is closest to "Art" out of my categories, and I think that's interesting in itself, because most people wouldn't claim to write it, and if they do, they'd likely be seen as stuck up. I say I "just write porn" too, even as I fall into that trap myself, wanting everything I write and read to -mean- something, to be "saying" something about... something. Thing is, you can't really escape that. You're always going to be saying "something", simply because meaning exists whether you yourself put it there or not. It can always be -found-. Question is, how well do you as the writer understand what you're inevitably unconsciously saying? How well do you understand the world? How well do you understand yourself? I think one's writing improves with every increase in the level of this understanding.
To me, the dividing line between porn (entertainment) and myth (Meaning) is very thin. I am entertained by meaning and a sense of some sort of mythic significance more than almost anything else, so one easily becomes the other. My need for a certain set-up, a certain background, extends into both characterization and mood as well as the simple mechanics of the scenario-- that is to say, I don't care who's slapping whose ass and who's calling who "Daddy" if you can't make me interested in the various psychological dynamics there. This isn't to say I need "plot" or "story" with my porn-- this is simply to say that I don't get visceral pleasure out of most sexually-based ideas, though I do have a small number of kinks (S&M or vanilla are the same to me, in other words-- doesn't matter). I get this pleasure from a lot of emotionally-based ideas (passion is what matters, and love if you can write it convincingly-- most people... not so much).
My point (to finally get to it), is that in the end, getting worked up on charges of OOC writing is useless. That would only matter if the writer was going for an "interpretive fiction" story, and most people aren't, fanfiction writers or not. Leaving aside the question of whether there -is- such a thing as a solid "canon" in any case ('cause it's -always- going to be 85% individual interpretation). You're still left with the fact that most people read and write fanfic for "entertainment only"-- in other words, it's a form of pornography, or "popular fiction". It's fiction with a -goal- in mind, there to hit specific buttons, even if your button is "this sort of Draco". The fic is there to cater to you.
Personally, I judge stories based on whether they make good -fiction-, not good fanfiction. I don't -care- if it makes good fanfiction, 'cause really, what kind of achievement is that, anyway? Like coloring by numbers, except people knock themselves out harder trying to accomplish it. You could write the most in-character HP fanfic of all time and in a way, it'd be a waste of effort, really, wouldn't it? I mean, what would be the point, exactly?
It seems to me that writing in itself is always an art if that's how you approach it, no matter if you write porn or The Great American Novel. The characters' humanity has to come before their "accuracy", whatever -that- means. It's writing-- a creative process-- not engineering, right? You can't really separate such a complex endeavor as writing into categories, I think. It's always going to be more than would fit into any box; good writing will have overflow, will resist categorization, won't be entirely recognizable as really -like- anything else that came before it. That's what makes it good. That element of surprise, of revelation, of sudden connection. "Good fanfiction" wants to add an element of recognition to the mix-- wants to have it both ways. And people generally have to decide for themselves which of these goals is more important to have achieved.
I guess what I'm trying to say is... I like my porn to work on many other levels as well, and I'm rather demanding about that. But as far as whether it's in-character... if I really wanted "in character", in the end I'd recommend going to the source. Which is why I get frustrated with people who seem to confuse the interpretative fiction end of things & the actual source. The -source- doesn't have slash. Slash and all other subtext is inherently connected to the source, yes, but it's not really -merged- with it. So any fanfiction playing up subtext is going to disfigure the source in some way.
Fanfic is all about messing with the source, it seems to me, 'cause if you read it to be "true" to it somehow, you'll just be disappointed a lot. Unless -you're- the person writing it, in which case you'll be sure to please yourself (if you write well enough). And of course, now we're back to the porn, as always.
See, two guys were talking behind me on the bus about what they did-- they were art majors. One was a painter and the other was a sculptor (actually, I think he had a sculpture concentration in a Studio Art major while planning to be a programmer as a life goal, but hey). Kindred spirits, all that, right.
I guess if one actually asked me what -I- did, I'd say, "I write porn". Or at least, that'd be truer than most things. I mean, it's not even "artsy" porn-- it's most definitely intended to be hot. And it's fanfiction. If I called it "art", quite a number of people would just laugh, wouldn't they? But hey, I think so. I'm an artist, even if there's no actual proof.
Roughly speaking, it seems like there are 3 categories of fiction: a) popular fiction-- written for entertainment purposes (porn, horror stories, detective stories, a good number of adventure/violence stories, humor, etc); b) didactic fiction-- written to express a philosophical thesis or to make some point about life and/or the world (myths, some fairy-tales, family & growing-up stories, a lot of love-stories, some historical novels, fables, Ayn Rand, etc); c) interpretive fiction-- written to transmit a certain slant or expansion on "the hard facts" as the writer sees them (some people would put fanfiction here by default).
Inevitably, of course, all these get really confused and mixed together until you can't really separate them at all in practice. But... for some reason, I did feel chagrined when I saw this long essay all about how Gundam Wing (the show) is a victim of "fan rape". Basically, 'cause everyone's writing everyone as OOC and that just... hurts the "artistry" of the show somehow. Dude, that's just freakin' funny.
"Art" isn't a separate thing, an inviolate thing that's confined to the source material of some fanfic. It's a sacred thing, okay, but... everything is art. Fanfiction is art. Breathing can be an art if you do it with -intent-. I've taken whole classes based around the idea of asking "what is art", and there's never been an actual settled-on answer, but I think I can easily say that fanfiction is an art without regard to its adherence to its source or its degree of in-characterness. That's just silly.
Most people would say that "didactic fiction" is closest to "Art" out of my categories, and I think that's interesting in itself, because most people wouldn't claim to write it, and if they do, they'd likely be seen as stuck up. I say I "just write porn" too, even as I fall into that trap myself, wanting everything I write and read to -mean- something, to be "saying" something about... something. Thing is, you can't really escape that. You're always going to be saying "something", simply because meaning exists whether you yourself put it there or not. It can always be -found-. Question is, how well do you as the writer understand what you're inevitably unconsciously saying? How well do you understand the world? How well do you understand yourself? I think one's writing improves with every increase in the level of this understanding.
To me, the dividing line between porn (entertainment) and myth (Meaning) is very thin. I am entertained by meaning and a sense of some sort of mythic significance more than almost anything else, so one easily becomes the other. My need for a certain set-up, a certain background, extends into both characterization and mood as well as the simple mechanics of the scenario-- that is to say, I don't care who's slapping whose ass and who's calling who "Daddy" if you can't make me interested in the various psychological dynamics there. This isn't to say I need "plot" or "story" with my porn-- this is simply to say that I don't get visceral pleasure out of most sexually-based ideas, though I do have a small number of kinks (S&M or vanilla are the same to me, in other words-- doesn't matter). I get this pleasure from a lot of emotionally-based ideas (passion is what matters, and love if you can write it convincingly-- most people... not so much).
My point (to finally get to it), is that in the end, getting worked up on charges of OOC writing is useless. That would only matter if the writer was going for an "interpretive fiction" story, and most people aren't, fanfiction writers or not. Leaving aside the question of whether there -is- such a thing as a solid "canon" in any case ('cause it's -always- going to be 85% individual interpretation). You're still left with the fact that most people read and write fanfic for "entertainment only"-- in other words, it's a form of pornography, or "popular fiction". It's fiction with a -goal- in mind, there to hit specific buttons, even if your button is "this sort of Draco". The fic is there to cater to you.
Personally, I judge stories based on whether they make good -fiction-, not good fanfiction. I don't -care- if it makes good fanfiction, 'cause really, what kind of achievement is that, anyway? Like coloring by numbers, except people knock themselves out harder trying to accomplish it. You could write the most in-character HP fanfic of all time and in a way, it'd be a waste of effort, really, wouldn't it? I mean, what would be the point, exactly?
It seems to me that writing in itself is always an art if that's how you approach it, no matter if you write porn or The Great American Novel. The characters' humanity has to come before their "accuracy", whatever -that- means. It's writing-- a creative process-- not engineering, right? You can't really separate such a complex endeavor as writing into categories, I think. It's always going to be more than would fit into any box; good writing will have overflow, will resist categorization, won't be entirely recognizable as really -like- anything else that came before it. That's what makes it good. That element of surprise, of revelation, of sudden connection. "Good fanfiction" wants to add an element of recognition to the mix-- wants to have it both ways. And people generally have to decide for themselves which of these goals is more important to have achieved.
I guess what I'm trying to say is... I like my porn to work on many other levels as well, and I'm rather demanding about that. But as far as whether it's in-character... if I really wanted "in character", in the end I'd recommend going to the source. Which is why I get frustrated with people who seem to confuse the interpretative fiction end of things & the actual source. The -source- doesn't have slash. Slash and all other subtext is inherently connected to the source, yes, but it's not really -merged- with it. So any fanfiction playing up subtext is going to disfigure the source in some way.
Fanfic is all about messing with the source, it seems to me, 'cause if you read it to be "true" to it somehow, you'll just be disappointed a lot. Unless -you're- the person writing it, in which case you'll be sure to please yourself (if you write well enough). And of course, now we're back to the porn, as always.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 11:04 pm (UTC)sweetie, you are so defensive about this IC/OOC stuff. personally, i think a lot of the stuff you write is fabulously IC, but you have to realize that for a lot of people, love of the source material comes first, and writing/porn/whatever comes second. (For me ... actually I am not sure which comes first. I cherish them both, that's all I can say.)
As for "humanity vs. accuracy" ... I get kind of frustrated when people take this "I must save the characters from JKR" attitude. I was taking a break today and surfing random LJs, and there was some comment by a person I like to call The Amiable Fascist in which she said that it was ok that JKR came up with Occlumency, because this author had used something similar in her own fanfic, first.
This did not endear me to this person, I have to say.
It is totally cool if for you the success of something as a story comes before its success as fanfic. But you just have to realize that fanfiction is a specific formal exercise, and even if you don't personally dig those rules (such as knowing canon and being IC), they're there for a reason, and they mean something for a lot of people. They define the genre, and they are precisely what attract many people to it.
Personally, I don't think that good fanfic and good fiction are very related. I have made this argument before, so I won't bore you with all the details here here, but I just think that they are different kinds of creative endeavors, that exercise different muscles in the writer.
I am not at all convinced that one is good training for the other. I have not read much original fiction by folks in fandom that impressed me one iota, I'm afraid. Overall, I've been amazed at how faceless and bland and cliched the characters are, and how clumsily their personalities are delineated.
And there is a very specific reason for that: coming up with fascinating, complicated characters is at the heart of original fiction, and yet this is precisely what fanfic doesn't demand of its writers.
99.9% of fanfic is not good fiction, per se. Try reading fanfic in a fandom you know nothing about. Even highly-praised fanfic. Almost all of it will seem faceless and dull, no matter how good the writing. Simply because fanfiction is a genre that is very different from original fiction. It is written in conversation with the source text and with the audience in a way that original fiction is not. Just an example.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 11:39 pm (UTC)The thing that really clicked for me is calling fanfic an "exercise", which I didn't consider at all. It reminded me of writing exercises in my poetry class, like, you know, learning to write sonnets & sextinas & haikus & so on. That makes total sense, and I keep forgetting that because I'm -such- an unconscious writer (even though I don't -want- to be), and anything I do right, I do instinctively and not "on purpose" as an exercise, you now what I mean? If I write in character, it's almost an accident-- I don't -try- to. Harry & co. are just... in my head. And they happen to be there in a fascion that corresponds to "reality", hehehe, I guess.
I get carried away 'cause writing itself is -soooo- important to me and I was reading that essay on how GW fandom is "raped" and it was just too much. I thought, well, there are a number of people who think the HP books are being "raped" by all the OOC fanfic, too, which... bothers me. But! Clearly I think the opposite position of "my fanfic is godly & JKR is nothing" is rather ridiculous also. I think each fan's creativity is just as important as the exercise of fanfic, just-- different. They're different, often compatible, goals, it seems like.
People who diss the books and say they're better are just insane, man, ahahahah. No, totally. I wonder about their mental stability :D 'Cause dude. JKR wrote it. They're using it. *coughs* ...Yeah.
I know what you mean about them being different and one not really having to prepare you for the other. For a long time, I -sucked- as a fanfic writer. I don't naturally -write- fanfic-- it's very difficult for me, really. I think I'm an original fic writer by nature, so my own difficulties in writing fanfic at all (before I got all lost in the characters) illustrates your point about them being different endeavors.
I don't know about the characterizations defining original writing, though, 'cause there are always archetypes to draw on, always cliches, always plot-or-porn-or-adventure driven stories. I myself have gotteninto all fanfic except for Buffy without seeing the source first. It's pretty easy to figure out if you know -anything-... or maybe I"m just a freak. But I do read Highlander & Gundam Wing & Smallville without much deep familiarity. Though I imagine there are the basic facts there at my disposal, and I do not, in fact, read in shows/books where I know -nothing-. It's still not black & white, y'know, for me anyway.
A lot of people seem to think my getting into fandoms I know v. little about is weird... and it probably is. I actually get more pissed off at fanfic if I -do- know the source very well, 'cause it's just -frustrating-, seeing how the canon I love keeps getting mangled. It seems like very few people write good -fanfiction-, though a number of them -do- write good (if OOC) fiction.
HP is a special case, of course, 'cause I did fall in love with canon-- later. AndI do love the idea of a "conversation" with canon, 'cause after OoTP especially, that's what I began to do. Before, not so much. Still... especially in slash... the conversation aspect of things seems to be muchly overwhelmed by the kink-for-the-sake-of-kink aspect of things. But maybe that's just another way of saying 99% of anything is crap :>
no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 10:08 am (UTC)And you made a really good point about the fact that you did indeed fall in love with most of your fandoms before learning the canon. So I guess we really do have completing different relationships to fanfic!!!
I am not so into the archetypes, personally. I like really character-driven stories, rather than adventure-driven ones. I'm not a big fan of genre fiction ... I've never read most of the writers that everyone else in fandom goes gaga for.
And YES about exercise ... I was thinking about sonnets as well. I think that the best art comes out of the engagement with some kind of formal restriction, but that's just me. I think too much freedom can be overwhelming and doesn't necessarily produce the greatest work! ... but I am shorthanding a much longer argument here, so probably this makes no sense!
Anyway, sorry for such a brief and disconnected comment ... *rushes about*
<33333
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 07:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 11:18 am (UTC)But I do write original fiction too; that's more of what I think of when I think of writing, myself. Even having written in other universes for series, the idea of writing fanfic totally intimidates me! But, uh, anyway, your post above really made me think about the differences, because lately writing I've found myself thinking how difficult it is to hammer out your own world and your own characters (which is why I saved it under "more things S_C says casually about writing that rock my world..."), and how I think some people might not even realize how much work is being done for us in fanfic even with characters that are not described at all in canon. Like you think you know nothing about Blaise Zabini, but in fact you know a lot.
Ooh, must have discussion on this. Lemme try to put together something coherent in my lj.:-D
a note of Gundam Wing... and other things
Date: 2004-02-24 01:26 am (UTC)Granted I have problems with the tone of this essay ... however I think authorial intent was to promote canon interpretation, which is, er, not a big thing in GW, last I saw. It would be like HP fandom, as a whole, accepting that Draco Malfoy is not only gay but secretly wears pink leathers.
To tie back, I think authorial intent has a lot to do with how a work is supposed to be perceived... for instance in a PWP, I'd favor pacing over content, as opposed to a canon-heavy plot. Someone else could probably get into low- and high-art sorts of things...
And to me, well, there is a great reason to try for canon realism. For one, it's a challenge. For another, it better accomplishes what fanfiction sets out to do: bridge the gap between the author's imagination and the source material. Excessive canon detail, if it's not there to score geek points for the author, is the best way to spark recognition. And that sense of familiarity is common ground for all fanfic, by definition.
Except of course for the writers who are pleased to write the same story over and over again, with the characters as interchangeable parts. And that is frequently good writing... but again, the authorial intent is clear. Their relationship to the source material should be clear.
I think that's just a subset of your own criteria of finding good fiction. If a story fails to do what it intends to do, then it's not a good story. If a fanfic deliberately veers OOC and stays consistent, then I'd consider it a plus. But if it's trying to inhabit the same canon space and fails, destroying that sense of familiarity, oh sure, I'd rip them up for being OOC. They promise and do not deliver.
It's true it's not engineering. But writing to me is a dual beast. It is art and it is craft. The fact that you ponder these things so eloquently prove that it's worth it to improve technique. (Though I agree, not worth getting hacked off about canon.) If you know and feel that it's art, then it's art. There's no Art License Bureau out there ;) At the same time, fanfiction and/or porn is something we *do* -- so yeah, I think the process should be refined and discussed. I think we should be comparing canon realities, in addition to all the other things we do for our wordsy babies.
I'm not saying that there's a written-in-stone canon somewhere, waiting for us to carry it down from the mountain. But I have watched character perceptions become seriously skewed because of one or two voices in a fandom who wrote really compelling versions of the original. To the point of obscuring instead of celebrating the original... especially when it becomes "definitive" fanon. Where the facts were just wrong, the characterization just wrong and everyone accepted it and propogated it. And yeah, there are lots of people who enter fandoms without reading or experiencing the original material first-hand. I have. (Still made the effort to learn the canon, though. ^^)
The source becomes our lingo, our secret code, and when the fandom (to switch to social forces, away from literature) as a whole changes that code away from canon, the primary artist -- the person who created the story -- loses the spiritual license to *their* art. Different artists deal with it in different ways; some ban it, some have companies who ban it, some allow it, some ignore it. As a consumer, I feel compelled to give a damn about canon, to the point of obsession. Anything less feels like freeloading, or at worst, belittling the art which makes my art possible. Think of it as an artist with an absentee patron.
Would I ever let canon considerations overwhelm my story? No. But could I footnote nearly every place where I diverge from it? Yes. But that's just me. ^^ And now I really really need to stop babbling. Enjoyed this tons!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 04:39 am (UTC)To me, however, fan fiction is a fourth player that can contain elements of the other three. Fan fiction is trying to play in a world someone else created and is mostly a tribute to that world or a particular writer/director/actor. It's tribute fiction. It's just that most fan fiction is based on a book/show/movie for recreational motives, so the fan fiction will be mostly for recreational purposes too. It's also to cover more readers. If I write a Star Wars story with clearly a science-fiction slant (writing a story about Han and Chewie fixing the hyperdrive while discussing the mechanics of space travel and the economic grow that brought), I don't think I'd get much readers. *g* Technically I'd be writing in the Star Wars universe, yes. But would it be any different from writing my own original book about space travel and economy.
This also made me think of my feelings for my two fandoms : TPM and HP. In TPM, I can read out-of-character, HP needs to be in-character for me. But I think that has more to with the amount of books and canon-material both fandoms have brought. In HP, we have five books, all written by the same author. In Star Wars, there are at least 20 different authors writing novels and comic books. Each write the characters a bit different, so I can read fan fiction and say "Qui-Gon was like *that*, written in that book, in that scene by that author". But Rowling has such a fantastic grip on her characters that I can't see them any other way than in the way she wrote them.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 07:30 am (UTC)Which is of course why I am now starting to fear I have lost whatever my original style was and am struggling really hard to find it again!
But anyway. Ahem. I don't really understand the need for fanfic to be "true" in the sense that someone says it "is" canon. It can't be canon. Canon is only from JKR. Sometimes people say the most bizarre characterizations are IC. We all respond more to things that ring true for the characters, but that's probably because we are drawn to the canon characters to begin with and that's what we're looking for. But a character doesn't have to be literally IC in all ways for me to find that. In fact I'm usually looking for the opposite, obviously, because as has been said again and again, all slash is by definition AU. So is all fanfiction. If anybody but Harry is the hero, it's OOC. Even if Harry's the hero it's OOC, because this isn't his story. It's funny...this makes me think of a hugely popular fic I've never been able to get into because I find it jarring in an OOC way. The odd thing is it's not so much that it's OOC because everything is that, but that it's like OOC by seeming like an OOC version of another source material. I think what we do more is look for some aspect of the character and if that's represented we like it, even when it completely takes over the character. It's not OOC for Draco to be a sad little woobie, because he's got moments like that in canon. It's just not accurate to make that his entire personality.
As S_C said, just look at the original work of a lot of authors. Even if you're not talking about original fiction, look at original characters. Often the less is provided in canon the worse the character is. There are some exceptions, of course, but usually what's so grating about Original Characters isn't just that they're original but that they're not as good as the canon characters, even in their fanfic incarnations. Even the exceptions are good because they approach the level of canon, not surpass it.
But with regard to the larger point, getting back to my being a hack, yup, I see all forms of writing as some kind of art, even if people would laugh at it. It's not like most of these people could do even what I do, after all. As you said, writing has meaning because writing is meaning, even if it's nonsense. Nobody can write a story that doesn't say something. I write for entertainment value, first and formost. I'd rather have people miss whatever deep meaning I saw in my story than be bored. And if they are bored, the deep meaning probably won't make too much of an impression anyway.
This is obviously true in HP as well. For instance, Draco in canon has been accused of being one-dimensional by lots of people--fans, critics, etc. Yet he's still real in canon. We look for reasons he's flat, like that it's Harry's pov. More importantly, for me, we fill in the other dimensions ourselves. Actually, this goes back again to what S_C is saying. Canon Draco, for all his sketchy characterization and unchanging-ness, is real in my head. More real than any lovingly created version of Fanon Draco, ic or not. (Actually, the only non-canon Draco that's ever inspired me to think the way I think about Canon Draco is
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 09:51 am (UTC)Um. That makes me think that there's more than one kind of fanfic reader. Ever ready to categorize, I am~:) Because a number of people like fanon!Draco more than canon!Draco, y'know? There are people who'll say this straight out, even if they like other aspects of canon. Some people straight out don't -like- canon & think they can do better, and prefer their own version of fanon, or some narrowly focused fic like... I dunno... Lucius-centric fic. And you can't really have Lucius-centric fic that's all that in-character 'cause there's so little we know about them. So any fic that focuses on the bad guys to a great extent is going to be pretty OOC even if merely because of that focus, 'cause the fics are so heavily Harry-centric.
I dunno why -I- read fanfic. I've tried reading it for the reason you gave, and been frustrated every time. I seem to always pick these obscure fandoms no one writes for, when I want that. Otherwise, I just go for the biggest, most widespread fandom & pairing, 'cause there's the most selection of quality there. I know I"m not typical, but fact is, most people don't write in character enough for me. I've never seen any writer who really reminds me of JKR's style/plot and whose Harry was really JKR's Harry to me enough to -fool- me.
I think most people are less picky, of course. And I see what you're saying. I was only talking about myself (note all the times I said "to me" or "I think"), eheheh. Yeah, most people read fanfic for that, though I don't. If I did, I'd call it all crap even more often than I already do, man. ^^;
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 10:51 am (UTC)Well, I've never seen that as remotely necessary (which is why I find the 'it's not JKR, or Harry's not the main character, or such-and-such' argument so infuriating.) The writing style of JKR, and the fact that she has decided to write seven books dealing with the seven Hogwarts years, from Harry's POV, has nothing to do with authenticity of the Potterverse.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 11:11 am (UTC)...
So I'm a tad unreasonable.
I'm a style slut, so that's what I get attached to in fics, y'know? So if I love something, a lot of it's going to be plot/pov-character/style rather than universe. And if you say "you look for what you love & want more of it", well-- I just don't get that from fanfic. It's just. Not there.
Yeah, you can successfully share the universe, but to me that's not the same thing 'cause there's a whole sub-genre of "shared universe" stories, which I"m actually into, like the D&D mass-market paperbacks (although I'm not actually into those). One can easily share a universe but... while that's part of canon, I dunno if it -is- canon, to me. I'm rather particular, though.
All that aside, I -have- enjoyed a number of fanfics set in the Sandman universe, kind of against my will. One was a cross-over with HP, "The Language that God Speaks" and one with pre-show Spikefic, called "The Voice of His Eyes" or something like that. In both cases, I felt Neil's all-sacred "tone" & mood was somehow captured, and by using minor characters. So apparently it can be done. But... I don't think it's common.
You were saying that people read fanfic 'cause of love of canon, and I was just saying that I don't love any canon for reasons most people can reproduce. Mere universe sharing isn't going to be enough if I'm in love with the source-- meaning, in love with the pov & the place-in-time and the tone. Then again, those are the things I notice, and the universe is always secondary and nearly unimportant to me. I think I try to dismiss too much canon consideration 'cause otherwise I'd just be too tough on 99.9% of fanfic, really, to enjoy it, that's all.
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Date: 2004-02-24 11:56 am (UTC)So we're driven to fic when we want expansion. And this is always a desire for more of the universe, rather than the style, because fanfic is about the author's world and not the authro. So if we love a canon for anything exclusively the author's, such as the author's command of language (which is the crucial thing about Sandman - plenty of other authors have explored merging the mystical with the everyday, but none do it in Gaiman's style) we're just not going to seek about fanfic.
Meaning that those who do seek out fanfic seek it out because of the possibilities the universe creates, and love of the characters. The author becomes quite irrelevant, except that they're the benevolent creator of all this. Aping the author's style becomes irrelevant too as far as what we call canonicity goes, because it's just not about him/her.