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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
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
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?
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
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I've been talking a lot to
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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?
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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?
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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.
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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
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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
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P.S. I love your icon.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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?"
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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).
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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
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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!
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But personally, I don't feel I have enough life experience to write SRS fic but it happens anyway.
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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.
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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).