[a rant a day keeps the bile away...]

[reenka]

I was talking to blacksatinrose earlier about why is it people seem to care so much whether whatever fannish opinion [especially ship-related] they have is 'popular' or not... and my idea at the time was that we have a desire for community validation.
    EDIT - Though actually we were talking about why people get psycho bent out of shape about it so maybe that doesn't quite apply, but anyway....
    So um, I was asking myself why -I'd- care whether I have popular or unpopular opinions in fandom-- and I realized that generally it's about subjects that seem to produce the kind of writing/reading environment I don't want to be a part of, maybe. The more popular a certain opinion is-- say 'writing IC isn't important 'cause fun = all that matters' or 'ICness = completely subjective so it's irrelevant as a label'-- the more it'll influence what sort of fic you see. The underlying meta that's around may not directly influence fandom, but it's a -product- of fandom influence, so if I see a lot of discussion that leans a certain way, chances are that's the sort of fic that's out there. If I don't want to read fic written with those meta underpinnings, however well-written, then my problem is more with the meta than with a particular fic, isn't it?

I mean, this is about meta, not a fic, right, and I can't help caring when many people disagree with this: hi, ICness? Is real. It EXISTS.

It's not totally subjective (though neither is it totally objective). It's not an exact science, obviously, it being literary criticism and not biochem, but the problem with literary criticism is actually that people get away with saying 'anything goes' in terms of interpretation. This is why I remember sitting in Tolkien class listening to some academics' interpretations of the books and thought OMFG, ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE ON SO MUCH CRACK. :/ And this is why I was too bloody embarrassed to be an English major, y'know? That much wanking can't be healthy. :/

I mean, hey. It's okay-- I didn't lose sleep over it; I'm okay-- you're okay. Being on crack is okay; I dig it. No hurt feelings; knock yourself out. But it doesn't change the fact that you are, you know, on it. What I care about-- what I can't stand-- is when people dismiss it as an issue altogether.


What I'm saying is, I wouldn't care if ICness -were- totally subjective (though I don't think so); I think that an attitude that is rigorous and -tries- to figure canon out as objectively as possible before writing a fic would consistently be more likely to produce fic I think is worth reading for other reasons. I think it's about sitting down and asking yourself why -you- think character X acts in such-and-such a fashion, in canon or in your own fic-- and I think the more you do that, the more you build a mental framework that has a logical/canon basis just because that's easiest to back up with existing behavior patterns. It's not about cutting off fancy or experimentation at all-- it's just about -caring- about that basic framework that supports the overall [HP] 'verse, which is another name for 'canon'.

I don't care about labelling whoever's fic IC or OOC; that's a case by case issue and there's too much ego involved to tell head from tail in those discussions. All I care about in terms of the meta is seeing that the writer cares about canon, no matter their bloody interpretation. People seem so ready to get up all in arms about whoever's supposedly badmouthing their fic (oh noes!) that they sort of sidestep the whole issue of fannish investment. I care about ICness because I AM A FAN: not a slash fan, not a Harry/Draco fan, just a somewhat serious/analytical fan. This is normal [as far as I'm concerned]. It's not freakishly uptight, it's not anti-slash, and it's not even elitist or whatever. I'm not oppressing anyone; I'm not randomly projecting my uber-subjective/delusional fanon fantasies onto someone else's fic [the idea makes me gag, actually]; I'm not making it up to make things difficult for anyone or to ruin anyone's enjoyment. This doesn't reflect my own personal view of 'canon'-- it reflects my need for a certain process that sort of... touches upon canon as a starting point (even if you're using it to overwrite/ignore).

In other words, let me make this very clear: in a very real way, I don't care whether I disagree with a fic on whether Draco actually stomped on Harry's face in HBP because he was just having a bad day or for revenge for sluggifying or because he's kinky like that or whether he's likely to do it again: I just want the explanation being used to make sense [you know, common sense? yeah, that]; I don't care where the fic goes from this or any other starting point in canon. In my experience, when I think something's OOC as I'm reading it's because something logically just-- doesn't follow, and this happens a lot in the HP fics I've read [often that are otherwise well-written].
    If A doesn't follow B, it throws me out of the fic: you can't just do whatever you want in fanfic with no repercussions because, you know, it's FANFIC. So if you have glaring logical discrepancies, that's a real problem and most likely in terms of characterization, it's OOC. You can't say 'anything goes' or 'it's up to your taste' in terms of any fictional behavior, because um, people in general aren't random, y'know? And neither are the characters actually puppets made to dance to your whims (I mean, you can go ahead and treat them that way, it's fine, it's just that they aren't like that). Sorry.

What I want is acknowledgment of the pattern that includes a) canon facts; b) canon relationships; c) characters' canon responses to said events/relationships. I want a systematic continuity; why else would one read fanfic and not original fic? D'oh. Yeah dude, that's what ICness means.
    The fact that some people in fandom use it to mean 'I dun like ur fic!!1' is not my problem and it doesn't actually affect what 'ICness' means. Just because there are subjective people misusing concepts [subjectively] doesn't make the concepts themselves either entirely subjective or irrelevant. I've liked plenty of fics I'm totally aware are OOC, man. In fact, the fics I've liked that are IC are in the vast minority simply because IC H/D is in the vast minority, so there. :P Saying something's OOC isn't a personal slam against an author or an emotional response-- it's an observation made because I've put some thought into the characterizations involved, thank you very much.

    If I wanted to make a [negative] personal response, I myself would just say something sucked donkey egg-noodles & leave it without needing any half-assed justification, because I'm just that self-confident, man. :P (Or not.) Point is, a reasoned critique != a negative personal response. Especially when someone actually says 'this is what's OOC because of such-and-such' rather than just saying 'OOC! OOC! run! run!'-- I mean, I only do that with my friends, and I personally don't even bother critiquing specific fics anyway, so. :/ But talking about critique and what's a valid crit and who's qualified or not is a whole 'nother dead horse, not to mention it deviates from my actual point, which is-- hey, ICness as a valid concept for fanfic actually exists! This isn't my floofy "personal opinion", popular or not: I'm saying this is a provable theory, based on [given canon] facts. Yeah, 'cause I'm just badass like that. :/

Basically, yeah, you can't have Harry secretly jerk off to Draco right when he was canonically jerking off to Ginny [pretty much] without labelling it AU. You cannot have him actually have a crush on Draco [in HBP] without same; more subtly, you can't ignore the fact that these various incidents [the sluggifying, the stomping, etcetc] that occurred between these two characters OCCURRED and have SOME consequence and meaning. They don't -all- need to be dealt with all the time [though it'd be nice, it'd get monotonous] 'cause that's unrealistic; all I'm saying is that ICness is about the fic's overall awareness of the relevant events to the stuff it -does- deal with.

Hey, JKR herself isn't so good with that sometimes [sayyyy... the Sirius+Harry thing] but if I say JKR's not-so-great with these sort of things but then, she's writing for plot-- what's the character writers' loophole?

Mind you, I barely even read [HP] fic anymore, but funny how even reading fics for shows I've never watched [like Sentinel] or watched only a little [like Highlander], I can still tell when the writer is being rigorous and cares about canon. You know how I can tell?
    I can tell because they reference canon events and not to explain away why X woke up this morning with a hard-on for Y [yes, I mean all those HBP fics]; I can tell because there is a -process- of getting from point A in the beginning, with a bunch of little references to other people [not villified or caricaturish! wow!] to point B in the end, where there is slash. There's a cookie in the end, but we start from 'no cookie' and a believable-sounding [straight!] character. This, to me, is close enough to the Nature of Classic Slash. It involves cookies & people starting out straight [...and getting a bit lost along the way], that's all I'm sayin'. The rest is applicable to any kind of fanfic.

The process/method reads in a consistently similar manner even when I don't even -know- the canon-- it's just the structure of the fic. In this sense, I don't even care if their canon facts are -wrong- because of this classic slash progression from zero to hero & all the little references that add dimension. It's the dimension-- the process I want.

So basically, I think you can't have IC PWP porn if you don't both know the fandom's canon pretty well [the reader & the writer]-- and in that sense, it's subjective, yeah. But that's specifically the nature of PWPs, not fanfic itself. PWPs rely on the reader to supply lots of background and motivation and the best [IC] ones would leave hints/spaces open to slot in believable initial scenarios and go from there-- plus the behavior/speech would remain recognizable. You're left with emotional states to build on [are they friends? strangers? enemies?] and speech patterns, but that's still a lot if you're good at it. Which. Most people aren't, but. Yes.

Um, so my 'conclusion' is that I really only get bent out of shape when things are discussed as 'just opinion', popular or not, when I don't consider them to be. Since I don't think the existence of ICness vs OOCness is totally subjective, discussing it as such is just incorrect, the way it would be incorrect to seriously discuss how those funky weird people like their funky e-vo-lu-tion when OBVIOUSLY-- obviously!-- the world was created by elephants. In Japan. These elephants, they sat in Japan at the dawn of time & they thought, hey [they thought], why not create the universe? It already exists anyway, so it's no biggie. And thusly! THE WORLD WAS BORN. Or something. So. Yeah, that kind of opinion rubs me the wrong way, somehow.
~~

Ermm... this is [once again] not the post I wanted to write; the rant just... took me like it always does on this subject.... This is not the rant you're looking for :/ Restart, restart, reboot.... Damn, no energy. I pretty much blew my writerly wad already, but... must-- mention-- actually-- interesting-- subject-- must not-- give-- in....

Oh yeah, I've been reading 'Benighted' by Kit Whitfield, which is based around a what-if: what if 99% of the world was werewolves, with only a very few humans, and those humans took care of the werewolves on the night of the full moon?
    This actually set me off on an interesting tangent 'cause there's a Q&A session and a 'reader's guide' at the back of the book [which I found V. V. ANNOYING, but] where Kit Whitfield says, in response to a question about what genre the book is, that genre is just for bookstore marketing & doesn't describe real books suffiently & keeps people from reading wider and finding things they might otherwise like. All of which is true as far as it goes, but....


I was thinking about how muddied genre lit has become, most especially sci-fi, because basically there's so much color-by-numbers crap written for it that it's pretty much choking the life from the genre. In this case, I think it's important to define & celebrate what makes that genre what it is, because it's a good thing-- it's an important thing, the concept of writing fiction about ideas. And that's what sci-fi can be-- what sci-fi should be. Speculative fiction based around extrapolating from a single futuristic or unusual or technologically-advanced idea-- writing about the impact of ideas on humanity. Writing about what it really means to be human when reality itself changes, using a scientific [rational & observational] approach.

Also, I feel it's important to add that the 'science' in 'science fiction' doesn't have to mean -physics- or computers. It can be psi stuff [psychology], weird/alien culture stuff [anthropology] or terraforming [ecology/biology], etc.

People think 'sci-fi' means robots & spaceships or else cyber-technology or extremely twisted future worlds & dystopias-- judging from most of what I see published, people think it's about the props. But science fiction-- to me-- it's exactly what Kit Whitfield wrote. It's taking a really strong, vivid questioning idea [what if most humans were werewolves?], and following that through to its logical end conclusion, while hopefully retaining a sense of wonder & mystery of the unsolvable. Now, fantasy can also contain strong what-if ideas, but it's not fantasy if it's built systematically and consistently around that single aberration as a focus. If the world is recognizable in process if not in fact, then I think it's science fiction. Fantasy messes a lot more with process, basically-- the only thing it leaves alone is the individual [to the point where dragons are pretty likely to be anthropomorphized in fantasy], whereas in a lot of ways sci-fi is more likely to change the meaning of 'human' & 'individual' but then remain logical within the repercussions.

Anyway, reading 'Benighted'-- a book about humans & werewolves-- reminded me why I loved sci-fi as a teenager :D