lettered: (Default)
It's Lion Turtles all the way down ([personal profile] lettered) wrote2009-08-27 09:35 pm

Fandom is SRS, guys

When I write, I do it because something in my gut needs to say something. Often with fanfic, it's saying, "I need to get these characters together!" or "I need to see what happens next!" But whatever the need is, I always get to a point in the writing where I start thinking about it. Lots of time the thinky thoughts--analysis of the need, thoughts about why this should exist, ideas about purpose--stymie my process. I suddenly have to rehaul everything I've written, because it's become more. It's not just my need to fulfill intensely personal desires any more, it is a need to say something about universal desire, about our world and myself.

To put it in fanfic terms, I start out writing crack. Then I get caught up in meta. Sometimes I start over so I can just write more crack. Sometimes I start over and just write meta. In rare instances I keep what I have and manage to turn the crack into something meta.

I've often been frustrated by this meta impulse when it comes to fanfic. It is for some people, but for me, fanfic is not that much SRS BIZNESS. It's a chance to satisfy crack impulses, which often involve porn, while my higher brain can be engaged in say, writing original fic. But that's never actually true. Fanfic always turns into SRS BIZNESS for me, whether I like it or not. As I said in my rec of One Thousand Kisses Deep by [livejournal.com profile] seraphcelene, the thinkyness is fun. Fandom isn't always just about getting off; it's about analysis and our need to express our own thoughts on the thoughts of others that we consume.

I've been talking a lot to [livejournal.com profile] my_daroga about this. We both feel we have Things To Say, which are thoughtful and important and could produce impressive works of well, art. But at the same time we're in this to get our rocks off--I don't even mean we're in it for the porn, but for those intensely personal needs I was talking about. It seems to me like we're both having difficulty reconciling that latter impulse with broader ideals. Which is interesting, because in the end both of these drives are still to satisfy ourselves.

So, has this ever happened to you? Start out writing "for funsies" and have it turn wicked serious? What did you do with that? Did you stop yourself from getting too serious because it's supposed to be "fun"? Or did you start something else that was more serious, or did you allow it to organically become serious? And what was your reaction to the fic changing on you like that? Is this something that only happens with fanfic? What are some links to fic you've written that turned serious somewhere in the process, and is the "transition" visible? Does it happen the other way around--you want to write something poetic and thinky, and it turns out a lark? AM I CRAZY?

[identity profile] kita0610.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 04:42 am (UTC)(link)
AM I CRAZY?

Well, yes, but that's besides the point. ;P

I used to ONLY be able to write when I had something SRS to say. That stopped being true a few years back, when I was like, ok, WHY CAN'T I JUST WRITE PORN LIKE EVERYONE ELSE? And then literally FORCED myself to do that. The downside is that for a while after, I couldn't think of anything SRS to say, because all the porn I had never written was taking up all the space in my brain. Or something.

Now it can go either way. And the weird thing (best thing?) is I get that BURNING DESIRE to write, even when it is only "for funsies porn", same as when its SRS BZNS. And that's new.

Integrate. Or something.

(As an aside, my total and complete nothing but ID fantasies are satisfied in RPG, and never see the light of day in fic. That helps too.)
lynnenne: (it mocks me by vamptastica)

[personal profile] lynnenne 2009-08-28 01:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Can I just add: Since I've started writing RPG, I've found it a lot easier to (a) write fics "just for fun" and (b) write ANYTHING. Writing is like any other skill: the more you practice it, the easier it gets. So, if you want to start writing just "for funsies," write a little bit of fun every day!
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 07:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I can't do RP. I have been trying on and off for the past year or so, and I fail so hard. My problem is that even my "crack" "just for fun" impulses tend to be rather serious. I mean, my favorite crack "Angel gets a puppy" fic still has everyone behaving in character and it had intricate plottings and interactions even though I got lazy and never finished. When I RP, I *feel* like I'm writing a fic; I get wrapped up in that world. If people don't reply I get stressed out; I cook up plots I want to happen and then try to make them happen instead of letting them be organic; and I get overwhelmed by POV--i.e. how much of this character do I need to show? Obviously, my problem is that I'm just too tense a person in general :o(
rahirah: (Default)

[personal profile] rahirah 2009-08-28 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
I once had a light-hearted screwball romantic comedy evolve, over the course of about six revisions, into and angst-ridden psychological exploration of repression and guilt. But that was more because the writer of this one character (it was a shared universe) had set up this cracky premise about the character, and I kept going "But that makes no sense," and picking at it till it bled.

Writing pure crack isn't fun or necessary for me in the way you mean, I guess, because the things I need to write are pretty much always stories where I'm paying attention to canon and believable characterization and plottiness and all that stuff.
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
Well, what I'm calling "crack" for me usually involves characters behaving in character, and not having plot holes, and such. I can't really write things that are silly and ooc, except every once in a while in like random comment fics, and even then that's rare. I'm not talking about the difference between writing good!fic vs bad!fic, but fic that's just to satisfy your id vs fic that has some . . . philosophical value, I guess.

The things I've read by you tend to have a seamless marriage of both. Like you have Things To Say about what being soulless might mean, but there's also the, "I like these characters and I wanna see them do this!" in there. That's probably how fiction should be, but for me these impulses clash.
rahirah: (Default)

[personal profile] rahirah 2009-08-30 12:50 am (UTC)(link)
I think that until I got involved in online fandom, I had no idea that the two kinds of writing were different things. Discovering the concept of idfic gave me a couple of "Oh, so that's what's going on there!" moments about things I'd read.

I don't think I'd want to separate them, though, because without the "I like this!" component, stories tend to be sort of... juiceless? I may admire them, but I don't love them. Without the thinky component - I think that depends who you're writing for. The more id-iosyncratic a story is, the narrower the audience gets.
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I don't think they *should* be separate things. Yet for me, they are naturally, and always have been.
rahirah: (Default)

[personal profile] rahirah 2009-08-30 12:52 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, are you sure that the stuff you do just for fun may not have a serious component to it that you're just not seeing, being too close to the work?
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 01:54 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, definitely! I mean, there's all kinds of serious issues rattling around in the stuff I'm doing just because my gut is telling me. The problem begins when those serious issues start taking over.

I *like* thinking about the philosophical issues in my stories, but sometimes that contemplation shifts the focus of the fic. Suddenly it's not about finding out what happens or getting my characters together, it's about issues of identity and morality or something. Which--it doesn't seem like it can't be about both, does it? And yet, the way it was fun before is fun no longer. It's fun in a new way but somehow I'm not satisfying the same impulse any more, and sometimes it makes me scrap everything just so I can follow my gut again. Or so I can work out the 'philosophical' stuff, either way.

It sounds like those impulses don't war in you, which I think is definitely the way to go!

[identity profile] deathmask-revel.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
Great post, J!

And I tend to agree--though I don't usually write anything cracky that ~isn't also serious (see Deathmask), I do tend to write fanfic, on the rare instances I do so, "just for me" so I don't pay a whole lot of attention to whether or not something makes sense in the universe. Except then someone else reads it and whether or not they like it, I start to think, well I'd better shape this up and do it proper-like. But then what usually happens is I stop writing the thing altogether... (again, see Deathmask XD)

PS--can I quote a portion of this, about the being frustrated by meta impulse, in my D9 FicComm?
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-29 07:45 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, you sure can! What is that?

Well, most the "crack" stuff I write, I tend to still try to be in character and have it make sense. Though E, I totally just wrote Spock of Green Gables. PAY NO MIND. But I mean the stuff I do "just for fun" isn't completely mindless. Still, it doesn't have much philosophical in it.

That's interesting about the meta impulse kicking in when you think someone is looking at it. I've had it kick in when I'm writing stuff for myself, but then, yeah, I'm not worried about making the meta "fit" as much, I don't think. But sometimes I do get so overwhelmed even when it's just for me that I stop writing it and go do something else. I can't figure out whether that's because I secretly suspect myself of wanting to publish even things that are *supposed* to be for myself. Um. Sorry to whine at you! Why are we so angsty?

OMG I love your icon.

[identity profile] deathmask-revel.livejournal.com 2009-09-01 01:37 pm (UTC)(link)
XD Because we're writing fanfic? Doesn't that automatically make one angsty?! ;)

Thanks! about the icon--it's a jokey thing that I use in my D9 Comm. Which is District 9, which is that aliens in a slum movie that came out a couple weeks ago and that I love so so so so so much just because, even though it's just a big allagory for the aparthied in South Africa...I don't care. I love it on a scifi nerd level.

And see, the aliens are called "prawns" in a derogatory manner, and a lot of the fic in my FicComm, is of course, prawn pr0n, so I made a "Hardcore prWns" icon to be funny and clever, and then I tripped off to write my own fic, which is surprisingly (even to me) not porny.

Ahem. Anyway.

I miss you guys! <3
ext_2826: girl with mellow smile (avatar - wangoballwime)

[identity profile] gossymer.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
Start out writing "for funsies" and have it turn wicked serious?

That's the reason behind my Avatar OTP really. I came to the realisation that in any relationship, Zuko would be the girl and Toph would always be wearing the pants (metaphorically speaking) and I'd realised they were MEANT for each other, lol XD Then started thinking about it and realised, hey, why not? Especially ten years or so down the line when they're in their twenties, it's not that much of a stretch - and they're both just awesomesauce so imagineing them together makes me incredibly happy :3
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
That's really interesting. I dunno those characters, but usually my OTPs evolve out of my lizard brain, whereas my meta not only doesn't otp, but focuses on different characters completely! E.g., with Star Trek right now, id is all, "Kirk/Spock Kirk/Spock MINE MINE MINE OMG", where as super ego is all, "let's examine gender identities in the postulation of an idyllic future!" or whatever. But it's cool how thinking about something made your gut see it.

P.S. I love your icon.

[identity profile] mabus101.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 07:44 am (UTC)(link)
For me, the things I "need" to write are virtually always about the SRS business itself. I'm not a shipper, and even my rare attempts at PWP have turned into deeper stuff instead. It's not just that I don't typically care to write pr0n, I don't even seem to be able to!

I've written some short, light-hearted things, but the longer they go on the more likely they are to turn serious, usually as I search for some way to resolve them. The most egregious case was probably "Electric Wolves", in which the Trio accidentally began bringing horror movie characters to life. It was meant as pure semi-cracky humor, but then Willow ended up wishing (to the djinn from the Wishmaster series) that Tara would just be comfortable with Willow's magic use, which caused the villain from Clive Barker's "Lord of Illusions" to manifest within Tara instead of a separate entity. And from there....well...it got really ugly.
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
Well, by non-serious stuff, I don't necessarily mean porn; mostly I just mean the stuff that's just for fun.

the longer they go on the more likely they are to turn serious

Someone pointed out that this is the way relationships work irl (you meet someone, you like them, THEN you get into the hardcore issues). I guess it's how everything works, not just relationships. Generally you have to brush the surface of something before getting to the cream filling.

That story sounds awesome!. Though I don't know anything about the movies referenced, sadly.

[identity profile] mabus101.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 08:53 am (UTC)(link)
Well, by non-serious stuff, I don't necessarily mean porn; mostly I just mean the stuff that's just for fun.

I'm a strange person...I write serious stuff for fun. ;-) No, really. An idea gets hold of me and I start wrestling with it and I write it down. And it's nearly always a serious idea, too--my major longfic right now, DeadWar, is a wild chaotic mess (not my writing; the shape I've gotten the Buffyverse into), but it touches on racism and terrorism and counter-terrorism and free will and all kindsa stuff. But when I'm writing it, it's just a vamp!Buffy story and unless I'm stuck, I'm having loads of fun.

That story sounds awesome!. Though I don't know anything about the movies referenced, sadly.

Surely you'd recognize some of them. :) I mean, I start out with Warren deliberately creating a Darth Vader "hologram". Which is, of course, where things go wrong.

It's here (http://mabus101.livejournal.com/11224.html), in four (http://mabus101.livejournal.com/12075.html) parts (http://mabus101.livejournal.com/18166.html), if you want to take a look. (http://mabus101.livejournal.com/33058.html). The last part never felt right, because I was trying to shoehorn it back into canon, but people liked it anyway.
ext_2619: Fred from Angel, reading a book. (BM: Batman)

[identity profile] noelia-g.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 08:47 am (UTC)(link)
I sometimes feel that my writing style is split in two, depending in which language I write.

My English stories are usually about my ships, and are much longer and plottier than anything I write in Polish. And I always sneak in some meta thoughts about the characters and the universe, but they never overshadow the ship, and sometimes I think they're not even noticeable (which is why I get a huge kick from someone noticing and commenting on them); that's practically what's going on in all my Jim/Bruce stories.

However, when I write in Polish, I almost always write gen, with maybe small pairing notes, and I almost always get very meta and thinky (almost all of my latest short gen stories were first written in Polish and then translated).

It may have a source in the fact that writing porn or erotica in Polish is practically impossible to do right: vocabulary available is either medical, extremely vulgar, or ridiculously harlequinish...
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
This is...fascinating. (Never gonna get over that word.)

These two impulses seem to come from such different directions in my head, that I wouldn't be surprised, if I knew another language, if they managed to speak to me in two different languages. It almost seems to make more sense that way. Maybe because part of my problem is I keep saying, "but why can't one thing be another? This crack thing over here looks much like this meta thing over there, so why isn't this crack meta?"
ext_2619: Fred from Angel, reading a book. (L&O: Goddamn Batman)

[identity profile] noelia-g.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 08:59 am (UTC)(link)
I think that, in a way, all fanfic is meta, because we bring our own conceptions of the characters to how we write them; it's just that some of it is a more conscious attempt at saying something.

For a long while I didn't write fanfic in Polish at all, mostly because it's damn difficult to write dialogue while you hear the characters speak in English in your head. It's especially difficult with those characters that have discernible language patterns - it's practically impossible to write a Polish Buffy or Xander (which is why I usually write Giles' POV in my fics. Also because I love him dearly, but mostly because his proper English translates well while most of the others' dialogue does not).
ext_98010: pipe of the crotchfruit (pic#)

[identity profile] misterwalnut.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 01:31 pm (UTC)(link)
This sort of happens to me a lot, actually. I usually fic when I become heavily invested in a fandom (or relapse into an old fandom I thought I'd abandoned), and I feel like I have to write something - carry out a what-if scenario, give the characters a happy ending - anything, to satisfy my ship or whatever.

But then during the writing process, I always quickly lose interest because the fic is already composed in my head - I feel like writing it all down becomes a hassle, because I've already salved my need to 'extend' on the canon, and I don't feel like anyone else would be interested in what I write (especially if it's an obscure fandom).

After reading your post, though, I've decided to commit myself to finishing an old WIP. So, er, thanks. :P
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 12:44 am (UTC)(link)
HEE. Cool. You get that WIP in shape!

This is interesting considering the way stories form in my head. I always have a fully formed beginning, a sort of hazy middle, and then there's an endline in sight, like a far off horizon, but that last stretch is completely a mystery. As I move through writing the story, things keep getting clearer and clearer. It's usually when the middle is clear and the end is hazy, or the middle is done and the end is clear, that I give up. I know what happens, how it happens, and as you said, writing it down feels like work.

There's something to be said for hacking away at it, though. I've found sometimes I think know what's going on, but in the process of writing surprising things happen!

[identity profile] stefanie-bean.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 01:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I started writing Kristina (which was supposed to be mostly light and fun, with some drama thrown in), and then out of the blue got this big serious impulse, which led me to write Phantoms of the Past. POTP *was* a serious story, and it did derail Kristina for some time, but it definitely was a case where I felt I "had" to write POTP, to get the Phantom "seriousness" out of my system.
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 12:41 am (UTC)(link)
Hm. Was POTP just another idea you got, or was it art of Kristina? Part of my problem is the serious impulse I get is for the same story. It changes the tenor of the whole thing, so I either have to go back and write the earlier parts so it's more metatastic...and then my brain explodes and often I give up. Sometimes I do get the idea to write something completely separate that's meta, which makes it easier.
ext_12071: (Default)

[identity profile] gaudy-night.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd like to think I write for the hell of it, but SRS BIZNESS manages to creep in because, well, it's a natural progression, isn't it? Character A & Character B meet-cute, everything's lovey-dovey, and then... *BAM* srs bizness. If anything, it adds some semblance of plot to my fluff fests. LOL

But personally, I don't feel I have enough life experience to write SRS fic but it happens anyway.
ext_7189: (Default)

[identity profile] tkp.livejournal.com 2009-08-28 07:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, I don't think being "serious" really has to do with experience, necessarily. I mean, I'm not talking about serious in the sense that serious things are happening. One can write a crack h/c story about rape, and lots of people do, which is perfectly okay, imo. The kind of thing I'm talking about is when you get into writing stuff that is philosophical--it can be "unimportant" in the greater scheme of things, it can be navel-gazing, but it involves a lot more consideration than a story in which (no matter how life-altering the events) the purpose is to satisfy base desire (again, not always sexual desire. Mostly id desires, I guess).

Anyway, maybe it is a natural progression. But I've read (and enjoyed) stories that were completely mindless--I don't mean that they made no sense, just that they did not ask me to dig deeper into philosophical questions of identity/existence/sexuality/et al. Lots of romance novels tend to be that way. So I wonder if those writers are actively avoiding getting into deeper issues, or whether those things just don't occur to them because this is "fun" writing, or what.

[identity profile] clawofcat.livejournal.com 2009-08-30 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
Hm. I'm not really on the crack wagon when it comes to writing. It's almost always SRS for me, which sounds rather pompous. But I think it has to do with a) the heavy subject material I usually deal with (read angsty as fuck), and b) enjoying writing that is psychologically engaging and requires me to think. I've discovered that I can't write a PWP to save my ass, but I do write sex often. It's just, it can't be meaningless or else I can't write it. I do character studies, so unless me and the reader discover something through the sex or the action or what have you, than I don't feel satisfied. I write, therefore I meta?

One fic that went from "lalala, I'm answering a prompt" to SRS buisness was a drabble I'd written about Buffy and her relationship with the cross that Angel gave her. The content of the fic prompted a discussion in comments over Buffy's character arc, etc. that I hadn't even been thinking about when I dashed it off. So I was all, "what's this?" and wrote a follow up ficlet in response that was pretty dark and sorrowful and intense. The initial impetus for the drabble was just for fun, but when others started thinking about it, my own brain wanted in. The drabble and ficlet are The Cross (http://clawofcat.livejournal.com/44218.html) and Burn Marks (http://clawofcat.livejournal.com/44459.html#cutid1).