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mark_asphodelA while back I made a comment elsewhere about the downside of fanfiction authors being too attached to their characters, which got misinterpreted to some degree and.. eh. Water under the bridge. I never meant to indicate that authors shouldn’t care about their characters, or that characters are mere tools to advance the goals of Plot and Story, or of Writing itself. A writer with enough skill can conceal dislike or indifference to his or her characters, and sometimes a character “comes alive” to the reader in spite of the author’s inability to like or understand the creation (see: Severus Snape up until HP7), but generally such things do show and it’s not pretty. And when an author loves a character enough to depict that character as a living, breathing creature with flaws and frailties, that shows too-- and it can be amazing.
I’m talking about something else, and though it’s certainly present in original ‘fic, I’ll confine the talk to fanfic here. And, just so nobody in FE fandom thinks I’m pointing fingers at them, I’ll draw my evidence from a dead fandom. How’s that?
The problem, to me, isn’t necessarily that an author can get too attached to his own characters, though that is certainly a problem on its own, as when you find an author shrilly justifying the goodness and rightness of a character whose actions are, objectively speaking, unsettling or even appalling. Or when you find an author doing backflips to protect her pet character from the logical consequences of her own plot and story. This is something more subtle that isn’t obvious on reading an author’s first story, or the second, or sometimes even the tenth. This particular malady surfaces when an author becomes so comfortable with a particular perception of a character or relationship-- a specific “take”-- that the author gets locked into a comfort zone which slowly saps the life out of his body of work.
Let’s get into the Wayback Machine. Around 2004, I decided to get back into the fiction pool after a two-year hiatus from any sort of media fandom. I gravitated toward ancient stuff-- old Disney fandoms and The Real Ghostbusters (don’t laugh... I’ve seen what you guys read and write for outside of Fire Emblem). And, believe it or not, 1980s cartoons have spawned an alarming amount of high-quality “mature” work, like John Nowak’s geeky epics for Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers. The Real Ghostbusters (henceforth TRG) had a great little fandom, one that felt like a throwback to the intimacy of the late 1990s-- ‘fics lovingly housed on personal archives with essays and recommendation pages. One writer in particular had both an astonishing personal output and a vast set of links ‘n‘ recs-- a real fandom trooper. I read her stuff on my lunch break and was captivated. These were like TRG episodes spun into life, with some of the bite and grit of the Ghostbusters film. Solid and humorous writing, well-researched and inspired monsters, diverse settings, plausible sci-fi, exquisite character interactions... it was the kind of thing that fanfic “ought” to be-- something with genuine respect for the source material that expands upon it, deepens it, and enriches it. I ate it up like candy.
It was pretty clear which characters the author favored, though she showed care and respect for all five of the mains. Her ‘fics mostly focused on the relationship between Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler (stop laughing, dammit), and while it wasn’t slash and both guys were portrayed as straight, her take on them veered to what used to be called “smarm”-- these guys were clearly Heterosexual Life Partners and their bond was the core of her stories. There would be a mystery to solve, then some peril and trauma, and some form of “I love you, man,” and then everything would be all right at the end-- just like at the end of every episode of the show. Good old-fashioned hurt/comfort in spades. And she obviously loved writing it, and that was fine.
I was seriously about thirty stories in to this woman’s archive before I realized something was wrong. It was probably another five or so stories (she was publishing steadily all the time I was reading her) before I figured out what that wrongness stemmed from. I was reading the same story, over and over. It didn’t matter what arcane monster she dredged up to be the Threat of the Week (selkies, Babylonian gods, love potions gone wrong), what exotic setting she used, what specific manner of peril and trauma she inflicted on the guys-- it was the same damned story, again and again. The little dance-steps she used to work her characters to their emotional epiphanies were always the same, regardless of the window-dressing-- and the epiphanies themselves were the same. Eventually, I’d begin one of her yarns (and some of these were “epically” long), see every twist coming well in advance, and grit my teeth. I felt cheated. Before long, I stopped reading her altogether, as this particular author had nothing more to offer me as a reader. I like candy, but ABC gum is another thing altogether.
I think with this specific author, her adherence to canon proved her undoing-- she was unwilling to ever “break” the world, and so every peril was surmountable and every story had that happy cartoon ending. No one ever died for real, the bonds of friendship frayed but never ruptured, and teamwork always prevailed. But her set-in-stone conceptions of Spengler and Venkman killed those stories just as dead, for me-- and remember, in other respects I found this writer very, very good. Grammar and punctuation and the like were non-issues. Plot wasn’t really an issue. But the static characterization was a huge issue for me... and clearly, the author liked her pets that way.
Now, maybe I’m picky, and most readers will happily sit down and gorge on ABC gum because it still tastes sweet and makes bubbles. But I’d like to think I have SOME standards about what I do with my free time, and this sort of authorial complacency-- or authorial blindness-- really irks me. And I really hate to see it in my own writing, which is why I keep trying to break free of my favorite FE topic (“Cute Boys from Altea and the Pegasus Knights Who Love Them”) to try something new and weird. And maybe new and weird fails, but at least it’s not (hopefully) just a rewrite of something I’ve already published. The words come easy when I’m in my comfort zone, but how many times can I use easy words to express the same concept again? And how many times can I expect readers to swallow that ABC gum?
The TRG fandom is basically dead, as the loss of AOL Hometown and Geocities purged the ‘Net of all those loving little shrines. I saved some of my favorites via archive.org, as they really did impress me once upon a time. But I can’t read them without feeling a measure of that disgust I once felt on opening the latest “new” fic and thinking, “Oh, this. Again. Why does this woman expend so much effort on banging out the same damned thing ad infinitum?”
Then again, why do any of us do what we do in the virtual world?
I’m talking about something else, and though it’s certainly present in original ‘fic, I’ll confine the talk to fanfic here. And, just so nobody in FE fandom thinks I’m pointing fingers at them, I’ll draw my evidence from a dead fandom. How’s that?
The problem, to me, isn’t necessarily that an author can get too attached to his own characters, though that is certainly a problem on its own, as when you find an author shrilly justifying the goodness and rightness of a character whose actions are, objectively speaking, unsettling or even appalling. Or when you find an author doing backflips to protect her pet character from the logical consequences of her own plot and story. This is something more subtle that isn’t obvious on reading an author’s first story, or the second, or sometimes even the tenth. This particular malady surfaces when an author becomes so comfortable with a particular perception of a character or relationship-- a specific “take”-- that the author gets locked into a comfort zone which slowly saps the life out of his body of work.
Let’s get into the Wayback Machine. Around 2004, I decided to get back into the fiction pool after a two-year hiatus from any sort of media fandom. I gravitated toward ancient stuff-- old Disney fandoms and The Real Ghostbusters (don’t laugh... I’ve seen what you guys read and write for outside of Fire Emblem). And, believe it or not, 1980s cartoons have spawned an alarming amount of high-quality “mature” work, like John Nowak’s geeky epics for Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers. The Real Ghostbusters (henceforth TRG) had a great little fandom, one that felt like a throwback to the intimacy of the late 1990s-- ‘fics lovingly housed on personal archives with essays and recommendation pages. One writer in particular had both an astonishing personal output and a vast set of links ‘n‘ recs-- a real fandom trooper. I read her stuff on my lunch break and was captivated. These were like TRG episodes spun into life, with some of the bite and grit of the Ghostbusters film. Solid and humorous writing, well-researched and inspired monsters, diverse settings, plausible sci-fi, exquisite character interactions... it was the kind of thing that fanfic “ought” to be-- something with genuine respect for the source material that expands upon it, deepens it, and enriches it. I ate it up like candy.
It was pretty clear which characters the author favored, though she showed care and respect for all five of the mains. Her ‘fics mostly focused on the relationship between Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler (stop laughing, dammit), and while it wasn’t slash and both guys were portrayed as straight, her take on them veered to what used to be called “smarm”-- these guys were clearly Heterosexual Life Partners and their bond was the core of her stories. There would be a mystery to solve, then some peril and trauma, and some form of “I love you, man,” and then everything would be all right at the end-- just like at the end of every episode of the show. Good old-fashioned hurt/comfort in spades. And she obviously loved writing it, and that was fine.
I was seriously about thirty stories in to this woman’s archive before I realized something was wrong. It was probably another five or so stories (she was publishing steadily all the time I was reading her) before I figured out what that wrongness stemmed from. I was reading the same story, over and over. It didn’t matter what arcane monster she dredged up to be the Threat of the Week (selkies, Babylonian gods, love potions gone wrong), what exotic setting she used, what specific manner of peril and trauma she inflicted on the guys-- it was the same damned story, again and again. The little dance-steps she used to work her characters to their emotional epiphanies were always the same, regardless of the window-dressing-- and the epiphanies themselves were the same. Eventually, I’d begin one of her yarns (and some of these were “epically” long), see every twist coming well in advance, and grit my teeth. I felt cheated. Before long, I stopped reading her altogether, as this particular author had nothing more to offer me as a reader. I like candy, but ABC gum is another thing altogether.
I think with this specific author, her adherence to canon proved her undoing-- she was unwilling to ever “break” the world, and so every peril was surmountable and every story had that happy cartoon ending. No one ever died for real, the bonds of friendship frayed but never ruptured, and teamwork always prevailed. But her set-in-stone conceptions of Spengler and Venkman killed those stories just as dead, for me-- and remember, in other respects I found this writer very, very good. Grammar and punctuation and the like were non-issues. Plot wasn’t really an issue. But the static characterization was a huge issue for me... and clearly, the author liked her pets that way.
Now, maybe I’m picky, and most readers will happily sit down and gorge on ABC gum because it still tastes sweet and makes bubbles. But I’d like to think I have SOME standards about what I do with my free time, and this sort of authorial complacency-- or authorial blindness-- really irks me. And I really hate to see it in my own writing, which is why I keep trying to break free of my favorite FE topic (“Cute Boys from Altea and the Pegasus Knights Who Love Them”) to try something new and weird. And maybe new and weird fails, but at least it’s not (hopefully) just a rewrite of something I’ve already published. The words come easy when I’m in my comfort zone, but how many times can I use easy words to express the same concept again? And how many times can I expect readers to swallow that ABC gum?
The TRG fandom is basically dead, as the loss of AOL Hometown and Geocities purged the ‘Net of all those loving little shrines. I saved some of my favorites via archive.org, as they really did impress me once upon a time. But I can’t read them without feeling a measure of that disgust I once felt on opening the latest “new” fic and thinking, “Oh, this. Again. Why does this woman expend so much effort on banging out the same damned thing ad infinitum?”
Then again, why do any of us do what we do in the virtual world?
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Wall of text
Date: 2010-08-16 10:55 pm (UTC)I think with this specific author, her adherence to canon proved her undoing-- she was unwilling to ever “break” the world, and so every peril was surmountable and every story had that happy cartoon ending.
I could easily see this happening to me, so it's probably for the best that I have Artemis Fowl to play with now as well. In fact I had pretty much stopped writing for FE for over a year before
That being the case, yeah I worry about my FE stuff getting stale. After all, what I really care about is one pairing and there are only so many ways you can have two people get together, right? When I was writing my longer fics I got around that problem by innovating stylistically, trying different ways of telling the stories. For now, just doing oneshots is enough because it's the first time I've ever written oneshots so that in itself has been a new experience. Also, playing with AU scenarios, because I really do enjoy seeing a known story transposed into a different setting. Good AU fics are hard to find, but on the rare occasion I've found one, they're a real treat. So that's what I do for now, but the future? Who knows?
Re: Wall of text
Date: 2010-08-18 09:01 pm (UTC)Interesting. I can kind of sympathize with that, as I do often feel that outright canon-breaking is... gratuitous? Self-indulgent? But I'm by nature someone who writes because the loose ends in canon frustrate me, so I can't entirely live within canon.
Also, if I feel that the creators of canon show disdain or negligence for their own material and audience, I tend to say to hell with canon and go into full-on "fixit" mode. Some of what FE12 has done is pushing me towards that.
After all, what I really care about is one pairing and there are only so many ways you can have two people get together, right?
Yeah. Or in the case of my favorite FE couples, have them NOT get together. I simply can't imagine doing a "thirty kisses" series about Merric/Linde, Abel/Palla, or Catria/Marth. I can't imagine doing five such prompts. I tried with Alm/Cellica, who actually do get together in canon, and I couldn't get out the starting gate.
Good AU fics are hard to find, but on the rare occasion I've found one, they're a real treat.
Indeed. FE8 seems to lend itself to such.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-17 03:02 am (UTC)The things I write outside of FE are many, varied, and scary. Perhaps you have inadvertently encountered me elsewhere?Hmm! I have encountered TRG fandom before (at a Porn Battle, no less), and the level of talent I found there was quite impressive, but what you describe sounds rather strikingly similar to my experience in Sailor Moon fandom: After the Oldternet bit the dust, so did most of those 'ficcers, and most of those 'ficcers had built their reputations on finding a niche and filling
the absolute piss out ofit.Quite the educational post here!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-18 09:08 pm (UTC)Good man. Now, loving a character to death is a different sort of issue, but you don't seem to be guilty of it.
BTW I want a Norne fix.TRG porn? Oh noes. Never found that before! Who'd it involve?
After the Oldternet bit the dust, so did most of those 'ficcers, and most of those 'ficcers had built their reputations on finding a niche and filling the absolute piss out of it.
Too right. BSSM was filled with that. Y'know, the thing that drove me over the edge there was a different sort of problem-- 'ficcers that got so deep into their Alternate Canon Interpretation that, five sequels in, the resemblance to the source material was, ah, scant. I don't see that in FE fandom, but perhaps it's because I avoid Tellius 'fic. And, as I've said before, in terms of Archanea I suspect that I am the deep-end Alternate Interpretation Series person.
I'm fairly sure we crossed paths back in the heyday of BSSM, actually.no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 12:29 am (UTC)I do have a number of Norne ideas that need to be expressed. I shall see what I can do.The TRG 'fic? Janine / Winston. :-) Have a link!
Safest of All (http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/26521.html?thread=2987161)
*chuckles* BSSM is a big topic, and I will admit that I am one of those who was (and is) big on Alternate Canon Interpretation, at least to a point. (Many of my favorite 'ficcers in that fandom – Troy 'Silver' Stanton, Le Var Bouyer, Tim Nolan, etc. – are in that same branch.) I blame that on being submerged in Usa-Mamo fluff every time I went to browse for new stuff.
Out of curiosity, under what posting name would I have known you? If you bumped into me that long ago, I was still I Abibde almost up until I left.no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 09:50 pm (UTC)Troy 'Silver' Stanton, Le Var Bouyer, Tim Nolan
All good ones, yes. The problem was that after spending many, many hours submerged in some 'fics and 'fic series, I'd come up for air, go, "That's brilliant, but what the hell does this have to do with BSSM anyway?" and feel kind of dirty. Had the same problem with Gundam Wing, Harry Potter, and X-files. But I did keep gravitating toward that precise kind of story...
Never did like Usa/Mamo. Or Usagi in general. Haruka/Michiru ftw.
I'm pretty sure I was Cymbalina or Cymbeline back then.no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 03:27 am (UTC)I think the thing about BSSM was that so many of us liked the characters, concepts, and themes, but hated the execution (i.e. the canon). A lot of us felt we could do them one better, and, in those days, it was more common to see people do really ambitious things like from-the-ground-up remakes, million-word epics, etc. ... I loved that about the fandom.
Gundam Wing is a whole separate topic, since it belongs to the mecha family that now owns my soul.
I like Usagi in certain contexts (e.g. 'fics based during the very first arc where she has to fight alone and almost gets killed outright by Jadeite; this got me on a Jadeite / Usagi kick at least once). And I do enjoy Haruka / Michiru, too. But most of the pairings that interest me for BSSM are, and have always been, either villain-centered or totally non-canon. (My flagship? Jadeite / Tethys.)
(I do recall a Cymbeline, but I do not believe we ever spoke. I believe the sighting occurred during the pre-forum / pre-2000 period.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 12:21 am (UTC)Yes. That's a fair assessment. And the ambition writers showed back then was astonishing. I am glad to have witnessed that evolution of the fandom. The flame wars were pretty astonishing, too (Save Our Sailors LOLfail).
Jadeite / Tethys
Heh. I admit to a manga-based interest in the Four Kings/Inner Senshi, but Jadeite/Tethys did float my boat back in the day, too.
I believe the sighting occurred during the pre-forum / pre-2000 period.
I first showed up in '99, whatever nom de fandom I was using. And I was very much intimidated by everyone then.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 04:43 am (UTC)*nods* I have also made use of the Four Kings / Inners dynamic. Having Jadeite try to fight down recurring feelings for Sailor Mars while also falling in love with Tetis is one of the things that got me going as a 'ficcer in my early days.
but Jadeite/Tethys did float my boat back in the day, too.
(Pun intended?)
'99. Hmm. This means you and I started at the same time. And that on top of being the same age. o_O Mystical.
One final note: I never quite stopped writing for BSSM. I have a whole pile of half-finished ideas that I might get back to posting, one day. In terms of mythos, that fandom can scarcely be bettered, I swear.
Some of that old ambition still burns!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-17 03:18 am (UTC)In my case, I tend to write the same-old, same-old without much variation in it, and I think it makes sense that it would drive people away from my stories-- or stories that do the same thing in ANY fandom. I know when I read 'fic, I do like the same-old X, Y scenario, but after you read it enough times, it does get old. It amuses for a while, but it overstays its welcome.
Anyway, great post, this. Thanks for making it!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-18 09:11 pm (UTC)Oh, no. I'm not offended. If I didn't want other people to see and react to my essays, I'd keep them safe on my hard drive along with all of my SSB-fandom rants. :)
I mean, I am writing to clarify my own thoughts about what I like and dislike and why that is, but I love dialogue on writing issues, as I'm sure you've noticed. Glad you liked it, though.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 11:08 am (UTC)This is why whenever I feel I'm getting into that 'Groundhog Day' mode where everything looks the same to me (which means it probably is), it's time for a break. I'll write in another fandom for a bit, or work on original stuff, or discover a completely new fandom all together
away from my touch of influence. I've found that reading other fics can help too, because then you get to see other people's interpretations.Though I'm one of those people who likes to write about things before the canon takes place, or after, or in one of those blind spots, or the off-camera moments. I don't necessarily write during/in the canon, because how many times can the fandom rehash episode twelve or scene number four or page number three hundred until you've got it memorised down to the last detail and go, "Oh, and then this will happen!"? It might impress my friends, who'll think I'm precognitive, but it won't impress me.
plus reading other things helps you see what the rest of the fandom is doing so you can rebel.
[EDIT] Also, since I work in a fandom that has a whole bunch of (somewhat) hidden source material (drama cds), I sometimes listen/find translations to that stuff and find a way to use it. Sometimes finding new canon in an existing fandom is like finding hidden treasure in a cave. The only bad thing is that your fics might contradict it a bit. But if you only discovered it then, it's not like you could've known that. But I do have that I can integrate somehow too.
I think it's all on how you use the canon in the work. Colouring in the lines all the time is boring. Sometimes you just gotta scribble on the whole damn page and make it look like Picasso.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 12:56 am (UTC)These lend themselves to certain types of fic. It's not that you can't step outside the box, but that the first place an author thinks to go is the obvious, and then they get attached to whatever emotional gratification that might give them, and it just feeds itself forever. Being an author who likes that gratification, it's very easy to give in and write the same thing over and over again with different settings or AU circumstances.
I guess what I'm getting at, now that I look back at what I just wrote, is that it might go deeper than character love, too. It's a symptom of something deeper, at least in my case. How you break out of this, though, I don't know.
I meant to comment on this but never did. Warning for tl;dr!
Date: 2010-10-03 06:42 am (UTC)Guilty as charged. XD Anyway!
I remember arguing with a friend who thought being a good RPer meant never doing the same thing twice, that to be a good writer you had to try something new every time, step outside the box. That familiarity was boring and made for bad RP and fanfic. At the time I got defensive, there was nothing wrong with familiarity, right? Is it really so bad to have a comfort zone even if you are up for trying new things?
Years later I find this rant and realize this is what he was most likely referring to. When it's not just the author having specific preferences and a comfort zone, but flat-out refusing to do anything new with the characters, whether it be strict adherence to THE canon or their own head canon.
That's my main beef with an author called GoldAngel 2: all of her Cyborg 009 longfics are about Joe and Francoise getting together, or being torn apart and reunited again. All of her Speed Racer fics are about Speed doing something dumb, Trixie having a jealous hissy fit, then something bad happening to make them reaffirm their love. Pokemon fandom reused the same old Rocketshippy and Pokeshippy plots over and over again. I myself was guilty of this in 2001, when I was heavily into Kunzite/Zoisite angst; my fics followed a format: One wangsts about his shortcomings, the other comforts him, sappy ending.
These days, I'm inclined to believe there's a way to mix familiarity with originality and expansion. Plus, I also consider canon's propensity for running gags and Aesop Amnesia: what if "same old, same old" is par for the course? And then I try to work with it in a way that works in favor of showing the characters' personalities; is it a comfortable routine for them (see: the dudes in my icon clashing via Serious vs Silly but otherwise working well together, or Erk and Serra arguing like an old married couple), or something they'll eventually get past (Helga's treatment of her beloved Arnold and BFF Phoebe due to her epic self-esteem issues).
Re: I meant to comment on this but never did. Warning for tl;dr!
Date: 2010-10-06 11:10 pm (UTC)That's a very good point, and a particular peril for works based off of television shows, especially the sort of show wherein every episode ends with a return to the status quo. I guess there are a number of book series that go the same route.
Re: I meant to comment on this but never did. Warning for tl;dr!
Date: 2010-10-09 03:06 pm (UTC)A) Laziness on the part of the writers, aka "if it aint broke, don't fix it" syndrome. Even if the characters grow and develop over time, nothing ever really changes because without the same old conflicts and lessons there wouldn't be a show. Examples: Saved By The Bell and Gilligan's Island.
B) The writers actually make it work by incorporating truths from real life: Old habits die hard, some people never change, people can be forgetful. Cory and Shawn on Boy Meets World grow up and change, but they retain certain personality quirks that used to get them into silly scrapes. Theirs is a case of "we learned our lesson the first ten times but since we're still dopes at heart it's going to take us another ten times before it finally sinks in". Same with people in real life. (Granted, BMW might not be the prime example since their continuity is skewed six ways from Sunday, but still)
Unfortunately, we rarely ever see B, especially in sitcoms and cartoons.