okay that post on dramatic irony
Dramatic irony. When the audiences knows something at least one of the characters doesn't.
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fox1013 pointed out, "It has a very different role in fic, where the reader is already familiar with canon, than with most other kinds of stories, and that would be fascinating to explore."
Which, yeah! Just for instance, the show Merlin. I've watched all of four eps of that show, but as I understand it, Merlin's magic is a secret from Arthur for a good portion, if not all, of the show. I imagine that if you're doing a fic from Arthur's POV, the audience knowledge that Merlin can do magic makes instant dramatic irony that can be quite satisfying.
There should be all kinds of fic like this! But when I try to come up with any, a lot of audience knowledge seems to be built just as much on genre expectations, or shared common knowledge of tropes, as it is on canon knowledge. And then I started thinking about how the distinction between "actual" dramatic irony (where the audience knows something characters don't) and audience expectation (where the audience expects something characters don't) is really blurry to me.
And then I started thinking about how fanfic itself creates canon (fanon), along with its own expectations, similar to genre, and it all went downhill from there. And I know I've talked about fanfic as genre to several of you (kestrelsparhawk?); it's probably a whole topic in and of itself.
So below are some random anecdotes and observations on a common theme. Then there are discussion questions.
*
Okay, to start, a list of things you can use to create dramatic irony:
a) POV. An omniscient narrator can show the audience all kinds of things the reader can't. If you're doing third person limited, you can switch between POVs. Only first person and third person limited-to-one-character don't offer dramatic irony solely by merit of POV.
b) Genre. E.g. The blonde going down to the basement at night to find out what that noise was doesn't know she's in a horror flick, so she's not that scared, but you know she's in a horror flick, so you know what is going to happen.
c) Narrative expectation. There might be a literary name for this, idk. It's related to genre but is more general. E.g. Checkov's gun. If there's a gun in the first act you know it's going to be fired by the third (or whatever). You know this because you know you're watching a play; however, you could hang a gun above your mantle irl and that doesn't mean it'll get fired before you die.
d) Common knowledge. Maybe there's a term for this too, but what I mean is commonly accepted physical, societal, and emotional truths. Sometimes this can be a blurry line between genre and narrative expectation. E.g. Character A is always staring at B. Character B doesn't know why, but we the audience know because a) this is a book!, b) this is a romance!, but also c) we have the knowledge that sometimes people stare at people they're in love with/sexually attracted to. Character B might not know this if she's an alien who was raised by wolves, but we know it.
Common knowledge is also important when it comes to establishing an unreliable narrator. The social norms surrounding pedophilia help establish that Humbert Humbert is not alright in the head, even though he appears to speak "rationally."
e) Canon. Canon can sometimes overlap with common knowledge. When Jesus Christ shows up in Ben-Hur we know who he is and everything that's happening with him, even though the narrative hasn't been following him. This is common knowledge, but a specific kind of common knowledge based on a certain narrative. That narrative can be historical or literary. If you're using canon for dramatic irony, you have to be certain your audience knows canon. Which provides very interesting opportunities for fanfic.
*
The reason I started thinking about this in the first place is that I read this fanfic that didn't unfold the way I expected it to unfold, and I was disappointed. I've changed the fandom to protect the identity of the author, but it went like this: Snape is Headmaster. His son should have started at Hogwarts 5 years ago, but never arrived. Meanwhile, Harry Potter lives in a farm in Norfolk. On the day the story starts, Harry gets this weird impulse to travel to Hogwarts, and it goes from there.
The reason I didn't like this story is that the part where the reader knows Harry is Snape's son, but Harry himself has no clue, didn't go on long enough. I wanted to possess knowledge of why everyone at Hogwarts looks at Harry strangely, while Harry himself didn't know. Instead, as soon as everyone starts looking at Harry strangely, he figures out they think he's Snape's son. Then there is a little dramatic irony, wherein Harry thinks he's not Snape's son, but we the readers know he is--but that tension wasn't really drawn out to my satisfaction either. Turns out the point of the story was the plot behind why Harry didn't arrive at Hogwarts as he should have, not to Harry having to discover and own his identity. Which is fine. Just not the story I wanted.
Okay, so when this story did not go how I expected, I realized how bizarre it was that I had these expectations in the first place. Let's catalogue what I knew, what I expected, and why:
1) Harry really belonged at Hogwarts, which I know due to canon
2) Harry was really Snape's son, which I know due to the tags (I have never read a Severitus fic in my life; again, this is a hypothetical example)
3) Harry wasn't going to know he was really Snape's son, and when he found out he was going to deny it, which I expected because this is a trope, and also maybe this is what I wanted from the trope.
#2 on this list suggests something interesting--that is that tags, warnings, titles, summaries can be a part of the construction of dramatic irony. These external trappings can be compared to book jackets, titles, and sales pitches of profic--which, in turn, can be tied to genre. The cover, title, font of the title are all going to contribute to what genre you think a book is, as is the shelf on which you find the book at the bookstore (this leads to all sorts of interesting questions about what online book sales do to genre expectation). Meanwhile, the shelf on which you find fanfic is a little corner of the internet--and usually, you expect to get a certain thing there, just like you expect to get a certain thing from the Romance corner of the book store.
And recently, I've been noticing that most fanfic I read draws on that type of reader knowledge and expectation more than canon knowledge. Which is darn weird? Since it's not like we have a solid definition of the definition of fanfic as a genre, and we do have solid definitions of canon (though let's not get into a discussion right now about whether the Buffy comics are canon, etc). I wondered if I was noticing this because I was reading a lot of AUs at the time--but then again, many AUs make extensive use of canon knowledge; it really depends.
For instance, take an AU of The Avengers, from Tony's POV; he's worked with Hulk before but doesn't know who he is. When Tony meets Bruce, we know Bruce is Hulk, so there's this cool tension where we know and we're wondering when Tony will find out, because of canon knowledge.
Okay, now take an AU from Tony's POV in which there is no Hulk, no super powers at all. We might still know that Tony, when he meets Bruce, will be interested in Bruce, because that's MCU canon--but it might also be because of the Tony/Bruce tag. And we might know that there's more to Bruce than the shy, shuffle-y guy that meets the eye, because that's canon too, but it might also be textual hints, such as his reluctance to meet people's eyes, or the way he flinches at things. We know that when General Ross shows up, he'll cause some kind of problem, because that's canon.
Okay, now take another AU, in which everyone's in highschool. If Loki shows up, and we were in one of the fics above, we might guess he was going to cause a problem, because that's canon. But now that we're in this highschool AU, we actually know that Loki is going to be an emo drama kid with eyeliner; we know that Steve is gonna be star quarterback, Tony's gonna be the most popular rich douche in school and head of the debate club, while Bruce is gonna be the nerdy kid in the A/V club. And we know they're all gonna interact somehow and Tony/Steve are gonna bicker and Tony/Bruce will be bff--and that's less because of canon and rather more because we just know how this fic works.
In some ways, fanfic can be much less what the audience knows about canon, and a lot more about what's gonna get tweaked or changed about canon. An AU is an extreme example, but everyone's interpretation of canon is different. So maybe part of the magic of fanfic is you come in with this set of expectations: Bruce is the Hulk, Tony is Iron Man, but your expectations are actually much, much denser than that, and what you're looking for is how those expectations will be met, thwarted, or shaped into a completely new view of canon itself.
*
The fact that the Severitus fic mentioned above didn't satisfy me probably has a lot less to do with "actual" dramatic irony than reader expectation set up by certain tropes. And because tropes can be handled in so many different ways, often we're not really dealing with "expectation" so much as the hope or desire that a trope will go a certain way.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, possibly due tobrown_betty's post about "tissue paper kink"--a trope/kink you really like, but only when it's done a certain way. For instance, if you love slave AUs, but only when both characters are former slaves and it's about dealing with trauma; you don't like it when one is a master and the other is a slave; you also don't like it when someone is going undercover to bust a slave trading ring, etc.
(Btw, if this interests you, she also did a call for recs of X for people who don't like X. So, for instance, if you don't like slave AUs, you could go look at the list and see whether there are any that leave out the stuff you hate about slave AUs but do some of the stuff you might like about slave AUs.)
*
Sometimes it's the trope you want, but it's just not done the way you want it. Other times, it's just done badly, and I find that this also happens a lot with dramatic irony. With that Severitus fic, I couldn't tell whether it just wasn't done the way I'd wanted it, or whether the writer had seriously just botched understanding reader expectation.
A classic example of badly handled dramatic irony is when Character A and Character B don't talk to each other. Character A loves B, but B doesn't know it. And B loves A, but A doesn't know it. You, the reader, know that A and B love each other and would live happily ever after if they only knew. You, the reader, have superior knowledge, because you're getting both A and B POV, so this is dramatic irony. But you also know you're reading a romance, which could be called dramatic irony sometimes, or maybe just genre trappings on other occasions.
This is a sweet set up, and I love it. But the absolute worst is when it drags on too long. The reader knows A loves B and B loves A and that they're meant to be, and after a while A and B just look like idiots because they can't figure it out! Ugh.
*
Random anecdote: I once wrote this Bruce Wayne/Gordon fic that really only works if you know that Bruce Wayne is also Batman. It was from Gordon's POV, which provided some excellent opportunities for tension; the audience knows why Wayne behaves the way he does, but Gordon doesn't. This tension took little to no work to create, because a) I didn't have to establish that Wayne is secretly Batman, because the reader should come into the fic knowing that, b) I didn't have to worry that much about Gordon appearing clueless, since it's canon that people don't recognize Batman's voice, jaw, mannerisms, etc.
Then, a couple years later, I wrote this Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy fic with a premise very loosely based on the Bruce Wayne/Gordon fic. Draco had a secret identity, Rabbit, but it was from Harry's POV. Harry interacts with both Draco and Rabbit; the reader is supposed to guess Draco is Rabbit, but Harry isn't. This is significantly more difficult to achieve, because I had to establish a) that Draco is secretly Rabbit, b) that Harry's not an idiot--i.e., there have to be enough clues for the reader to conclude that Rabbit is Draco, but not enough clues for Harry to figure it out; since it's from Harry's POV, this is hard, c) that Harry Potter is a world in which people have secret identities.
So, I couldn't rely on readers to know Draco's secret identity just because they knew canon, but I could rely on them to figure out Draco's secret identity because it was still fanfic. That is, the fic was labeled Harry/Draco. It was posted for a Harry/Draco exchange fest. While sometimes people pair Harry with other people in Harry/Draco fandom, it doesn't happen nearly as often as say, Peter/El in Peter/Neal fandom in White Collar. I even relied on the fact that Harry/other is often problematized in Harry/Draco fic; if Harry's with Ginny or someone else, whoever, there's something wrong with the relationship so we can easily see why he should be with Draco instead. This isn't the case with all Harry/Draco fic, but it's often the case.
Lastly, secret identity/mistaken identity/identity-fuckery is also a common trope in fanfic. Amnesia is not that common irl, but in fiction it's way more common, and in fanfic it's even more common. Same goes for identity tropes. So, I relied on all of these things put together, as well as some strong hints within the text itself, to help the reader come to a conclusion the character couldn't come to, in order not to make the character seem too clueless, and in order to give the reader a hit of the nice tension dramatic irony gives you. I don't think the fic was entirely successful; I'm just using it as an example.
In the Batman fic, dramatic irony is built off knowledge the reader absolutely should have that the characters don't. In the HP fic, dramatic irony is built off the text itself a little bit, but also genre, tropes, and reader expectation. Why did I tell you this story? I have no idea.
*
Two really great uses of dramatic irony, imo, were:
1) Tigana. So, all that shit with Dianora is fucked up, but omg, knowing who she is while Brandin doesn't killed me. There's also this other part where her brother is right there and neither of them know.
2) Gladiator. When Maximus faces Commodus and we know who he is and Maximus knows who he is but COMMODUS DOESN'T at first ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I don't think either of these are the most stellar pieces of literature, but when I think of dramatic irony, they're what I think of most. I was literally biting my nails during both.
*
Okay, so questions:
1) What are some fanfics that make good use of the reader's canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? (Links?)
2) What are some bad uses of dramatic irony that annoy you?
3) Do you like dramatic irony? Why is it so awesome? Is it because I'm just a know-it-all who really, really likes knowing things other people don't?
4) What are some other ways to create dramatic irony?
5) What are some profics/movies/tv/other media that make great use of dramatic irony? Was it nail-biting?
6) What are your thoughts on how to set up a narrator as unreliable?
7) Do AUs make more use of dramatic irony through canon knowledge, or genre expectation, or does it just depend on the AU?
8) What are your thoughts on fanfic as a genre?
9) Do you consciously use canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? Or does it just happen?
10) What are your thoughts on dramatic irony vs reader expectations? Is it useful to make a distinction? Is there a distinction, etc
idk guys I just wanna talk
*
fox1013 pointed out, "It has a very different role in fic, where the reader is already familiar with canon, than with most other kinds of stories, and that would be fascinating to explore."Which, yeah! Just for instance, the show Merlin. I've watched all of four eps of that show, but as I understand it, Merlin's magic is a secret from Arthur for a good portion, if not all, of the show. I imagine that if you're doing a fic from Arthur's POV, the audience knowledge that Merlin can do magic makes instant dramatic irony that can be quite satisfying.
There should be all kinds of fic like this! But when I try to come up with any, a lot of audience knowledge seems to be built just as much on genre expectations, or shared common knowledge of tropes, as it is on canon knowledge. And then I started thinking about how the distinction between "actual" dramatic irony (where the audience knows something characters don't) and audience expectation (where the audience expects something characters don't) is really blurry to me.
And then I started thinking about how fanfic itself creates canon (fanon), along with its own expectations, similar to genre, and it all went downhill from there. And I know I've talked about fanfic as genre to several of you (
kestrelsparhawk?); it's probably a whole topic in and of itself. So below are some random anecdotes and observations on a common theme. Then there are discussion questions.
*
Okay, to start, a list of things you can use to create dramatic irony:
a) POV. An omniscient narrator can show the audience all kinds of things the reader can't. If you're doing third person limited, you can switch between POVs. Only first person and third person limited-to-one-character don't offer dramatic irony solely by merit of POV.
b) Genre. E.g. The blonde going down to the basement at night to find out what that noise was doesn't know she's in a horror flick, so she's not that scared, but you know she's in a horror flick, so you know what is going to happen.
c) Narrative expectation. There might be a literary name for this, idk. It's related to genre but is more general. E.g. Checkov's gun. If there's a gun in the first act you know it's going to be fired by the third (or whatever). You know this because you know you're watching a play; however, you could hang a gun above your mantle irl and that doesn't mean it'll get fired before you die.
d) Common knowledge. Maybe there's a term for this too, but what I mean is commonly accepted physical, societal, and emotional truths. Sometimes this can be a blurry line between genre and narrative expectation. E.g. Character A is always staring at B. Character B doesn't know why, but we the audience know because a) this is a book!, b) this is a romance!, but also c) we have the knowledge that sometimes people stare at people they're in love with/sexually attracted to. Character B might not know this if she's an alien who was raised by wolves, but we know it.
Common knowledge is also important when it comes to establishing an unreliable narrator. The social norms surrounding pedophilia help establish that Humbert Humbert is not alright in the head, even though he appears to speak "rationally."
e) Canon. Canon can sometimes overlap with common knowledge. When Jesus Christ shows up in Ben-Hur we know who he is and everything that's happening with him, even though the narrative hasn't been following him. This is common knowledge, but a specific kind of common knowledge based on a certain narrative. That narrative can be historical or literary. If you're using canon for dramatic irony, you have to be certain your audience knows canon. Which provides very interesting opportunities for fanfic.
*
The reason I started thinking about this in the first place is that I read this fanfic that didn't unfold the way I expected it to unfold, and I was disappointed. I've changed the fandom to protect the identity of the author, but it went like this: Snape is Headmaster. His son should have started at Hogwarts 5 years ago, but never arrived. Meanwhile, Harry Potter lives in a farm in Norfolk. On the day the story starts, Harry gets this weird impulse to travel to Hogwarts, and it goes from there.
The reason I didn't like this story is that the part where the reader knows Harry is Snape's son, but Harry himself has no clue, didn't go on long enough. I wanted to possess knowledge of why everyone at Hogwarts looks at Harry strangely, while Harry himself didn't know. Instead, as soon as everyone starts looking at Harry strangely, he figures out they think he's Snape's son. Then there is a little dramatic irony, wherein Harry thinks he's not Snape's son, but we the readers know he is--but that tension wasn't really drawn out to my satisfaction either. Turns out the point of the story was the plot behind why Harry didn't arrive at Hogwarts as he should have, not to Harry having to discover and own his identity. Which is fine. Just not the story I wanted.
Okay, so when this story did not go how I expected, I realized how bizarre it was that I had these expectations in the first place. Let's catalogue what I knew, what I expected, and why:
1) Harry really belonged at Hogwarts, which I know due to canon
2) Harry was really Snape's son, which I know due to the tags (I have never read a Severitus fic in my life; again, this is a hypothetical example)
3) Harry wasn't going to know he was really Snape's son, and when he found out he was going to deny it, which I expected because this is a trope, and also maybe this is what I wanted from the trope.
#2 on this list suggests something interesting--that is that tags, warnings, titles, summaries can be a part of the construction of dramatic irony. These external trappings can be compared to book jackets, titles, and sales pitches of profic--which, in turn, can be tied to genre. The cover, title, font of the title are all going to contribute to what genre you think a book is, as is the shelf on which you find the book at the bookstore (this leads to all sorts of interesting questions about what online book sales do to genre expectation). Meanwhile, the shelf on which you find fanfic is a little corner of the internet--and usually, you expect to get a certain thing there, just like you expect to get a certain thing from the Romance corner of the book store.
And recently, I've been noticing that most fanfic I read draws on that type of reader knowledge and expectation more than canon knowledge. Which is darn weird? Since it's not like we have a solid definition of the definition of fanfic as a genre, and we do have solid definitions of canon (though let's not get into a discussion right now about whether the Buffy comics are canon, etc). I wondered if I was noticing this because I was reading a lot of AUs at the time--but then again, many AUs make extensive use of canon knowledge; it really depends.
For instance, take an AU of The Avengers, from Tony's POV; he's worked with Hulk before but doesn't know who he is. When Tony meets Bruce, we know Bruce is Hulk, so there's this cool tension where we know and we're wondering when Tony will find out, because of canon knowledge.
Okay, now take an AU from Tony's POV in which there is no Hulk, no super powers at all. We might still know that Tony, when he meets Bruce, will be interested in Bruce, because that's MCU canon--but it might also be because of the Tony/Bruce tag. And we might know that there's more to Bruce than the shy, shuffle-y guy that meets the eye, because that's canon too, but it might also be textual hints, such as his reluctance to meet people's eyes, or the way he flinches at things. We know that when General Ross shows up, he'll cause some kind of problem, because that's canon.
Okay, now take another AU, in which everyone's in highschool. If Loki shows up, and we were in one of the fics above, we might guess he was going to cause a problem, because that's canon. But now that we're in this highschool AU, we actually know that Loki is going to be an emo drama kid with eyeliner; we know that Steve is gonna be star quarterback, Tony's gonna be the most popular rich douche in school and head of the debate club, while Bruce is gonna be the nerdy kid in the A/V club. And we know they're all gonna interact somehow and Tony/Steve are gonna bicker and Tony/Bruce will be bff--and that's less because of canon and rather more because we just know how this fic works.
In some ways, fanfic can be much less what the audience knows about canon, and a lot more about what's gonna get tweaked or changed about canon. An AU is an extreme example, but everyone's interpretation of canon is different. So maybe part of the magic of fanfic is you come in with this set of expectations: Bruce is the Hulk, Tony is Iron Man, but your expectations are actually much, much denser than that, and what you're looking for is how those expectations will be met, thwarted, or shaped into a completely new view of canon itself.
*
The fact that the Severitus fic mentioned above didn't satisfy me probably has a lot less to do with "actual" dramatic irony than reader expectation set up by certain tropes. And because tropes can be handled in so many different ways, often we're not really dealing with "expectation" so much as the hope or desire that a trope will go a certain way.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, possibly due to
brown_betty's post about "tissue paper kink"--a trope/kink you really like, but only when it's done a certain way. For instance, if you love slave AUs, but only when both characters are former slaves and it's about dealing with trauma; you don't like it when one is a master and the other is a slave; you also don't like it when someone is going undercover to bust a slave trading ring, etc.(Btw, if this interests you, she also did a call for recs of X for people who don't like X. So, for instance, if you don't like slave AUs, you could go look at the list and see whether there are any that leave out the stuff you hate about slave AUs but do some of the stuff you might like about slave AUs.)
*
Sometimes it's the trope you want, but it's just not done the way you want it. Other times, it's just done badly, and I find that this also happens a lot with dramatic irony. With that Severitus fic, I couldn't tell whether it just wasn't done the way I'd wanted it, or whether the writer had seriously just botched understanding reader expectation.
A classic example of badly handled dramatic irony is when Character A and Character B don't talk to each other. Character A loves B, but B doesn't know it. And B loves A, but A doesn't know it. You, the reader, know that A and B love each other and would live happily ever after if they only knew. You, the reader, have superior knowledge, because you're getting both A and B POV, so this is dramatic irony. But you also know you're reading a romance, which could be called dramatic irony sometimes, or maybe just genre trappings on other occasions.
This is a sweet set up, and I love it. But the absolute worst is when it drags on too long. The reader knows A loves B and B loves A and that they're meant to be, and after a while A and B just look like idiots because they can't figure it out! Ugh.
*
Random anecdote: I once wrote this Bruce Wayne/Gordon fic that really only works if you know that Bruce Wayne is also Batman. It was from Gordon's POV, which provided some excellent opportunities for tension; the audience knows why Wayne behaves the way he does, but Gordon doesn't. This tension took little to no work to create, because a) I didn't have to establish that Wayne is secretly Batman, because the reader should come into the fic knowing that, b) I didn't have to worry that much about Gordon appearing clueless, since it's canon that people don't recognize Batman's voice, jaw, mannerisms, etc.
Then, a couple years later, I wrote this Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy fic with a premise very loosely based on the Bruce Wayne/Gordon fic. Draco had a secret identity, Rabbit, but it was from Harry's POV. Harry interacts with both Draco and Rabbit; the reader is supposed to guess Draco is Rabbit, but Harry isn't. This is significantly more difficult to achieve, because I had to establish a) that Draco is secretly Rabbit, b) that Harry's not an idiot--i.e., there have to be enough clues for the reader to conclude that Rabbit is Draco, but not enough clues for Harry to figure it out; since it's from Harry's POV, this is hard, c) that Harry Potter is a world in which people have secret identities.
So, I couldn't rely on readers to know Draco's secret identity just because they knew canon, but I could rely on them to figure out Draco's secret identity because it was still fanfic. That is, the fic was labeled Harry/Draco. It was posted for a Harry/Draco exchange fest. While sometimes people pair Harry with other people in Harry/Draco fandom, it doesn't happen nearly as often as say, Peter/El in Peter/Neal fandom in White Collar. I even relied on the fact that Harry/other is often problematized in Harry/Draco fic; if Harry's with Ginny or someone else, whoever, there's something wrong with the relationship so we can easily see why he should be with Draco instead. This isn't the case with all Harry/Draco fic, but it's often the case.
Lastly, secret identity/mistaken identity/identity-fuckery is also a common trope in fanfic. Amnesia is not that common irl, but in fiction it's way more common, and in fanfic it's even more common. Same goes for identity tropes. So, I relied on all of these things put together, as well as some strong hints within the text itself, to help the reader come to a conclusion the character couldn't come to, in order not to make the character seem too clueless, and in order to give the reader a hit of the nice tension dramatic irony gives you. I don't think the fic was entirely successful; I'm just using it as an example.
In the Batman fic, dramatic irony is built off knowledge the reader absolutely should have that the characters don't. In the HP fic, dramatic irony is built off the text itself a little bit, but also genre, tropes, and reader expectation. Why did I tell you this story? I have no idea.
*
Two really great uses of dramatic irony, imo, were:
1) Tigana. So, all that shit with Dianora is fucked up, but omg, knowing who she is while Brandin doesn't killed me. There's also this other part where her brother is right there and neither of them know.
2) Gladiator. When Maximus faces Commodus and we know who he is and Maximus knows who he is but COMMODUS DOESN'T at first ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I don't think either of these are the most stellar pieces of literature, but when I think of dramatic irony, they're what I think of most. I was literally biting my nails during both.
*
Okay, so questions:
1) What are some fanfics that make good use of the reader's canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? (Links?)
2) What are some bad uses of dramatic irony that annoy you?
3) Do you like dramatic irony? Why is it so awesome? Is it because I'm just a know-it-all who really, really likes knowing things other people don't?
4) What are some other ways to create dramatic irony?
5) What are some profics/movies/tv/other media that make great use of dramatic irony? Was it nail-biting?
6) What are your thoughts on how to set up a narrator as unreliable?
7) Do AUs make more use of dramatic irony through canon knowledge, or genre expectation, or does it just depend on the AU?
8) What are your thoughts on fanfic as a genre?
9) Do you consciously use canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? Or does it just happen?
10) What are your thoughts on dramatic irony vs reader expectations? Is it useful to make a distinction? Is there a distinction, etc
idk guys I just wanna talk
*
no subject
(Though of course disputes over how to tag things happen all the time, and I for one would be quite happy if people who want to write "Pepper breaks up with Tony and then is eaten by a whale while Tony and Steve make out" stories wouldn't tag them Tony/Pepper, frex.)
(Though I do like using tags to play with expectations about fic genres - like, combining tags for BDSM kinks with tags for fluffy domestic-style fic, because I wholly believe that you can do those two things together but some don't, or don't want to see them together for whatever reason. But I would never lie about a tag, is the thing.)
ANYWAY, the main thing I came here to say was: I think that the other main factor playing into dramatic irony in fanfiction that doesn't work so well in mainstream fiction is expectations caused by fic itself - not by the genre "fanfiction" or the genre "slash fiction" or the genre "superhero femslash," for example, but rather by the particular conventions of a very specific subset of stories. So, lots of people write what's been called Issue Fic, where the fic addresses, in narrative, an issue within the fandom. When everyone in SGA was writing McKay/Sheppard "genderswap" fic, for a while it was alllll really heteronormative, about one guy turning into a woman, then they'd have a het romance and a baby etc., then they'd turn back. And I wanted to write one where they were both women, and got together as self-identified male lesbians (that fic is outdated and kind of crappy in retrospect, but it's just an example).
A better example is something like Helenish's Take Clothes Off As Directed, which took the BDSM AU and asked, okay, but what if it doesn't work for these people the way it's supposed to? There are plenty of fics that do this with common fic tropes - I remember one where Tony's soulbonded to Obadiah, which is all about how soulbonds are creepy and Tony needs to get away from his soulbonded lifemate and find a nice guy who isn't connected to him by a mystical bond. Every fic trope I can think of in a medium to large fandom has had those issue fics, that says, "Well, we've all read the one where Draco's part Veela, BUT" or "Well, we've all read the one where Gabrielle and Xena are having hot tub sex, BUT" . . .
So, fics like that depend on the reader knowing, not just who Bruce Wayne is or that Batman exists or that people are likely to kiss because it's a romance - they depend on people also being familiar with the sub-sub-sub-genre, the current tenor in the fandom, the other fics that used this trope, etc. There are jokes in some of my fics that only make sense if you were reading all the fic of a certain type going around at the time.
And this is interesting to me because it gives fanfic authors a unique opportunity to play with characterization, tropes, and especially all the things that are "common knowledge" in the fandom or in the sub-fandom for the pairing or whatever. It's a kind of fanfiction as old as dirt, but it never really occurred to me to connect it to dramatic irony. And, anyhow, that's what your post made me think of. :)
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Yeah. This makes the "good faith" part of tagging really difficult for me. This is a whole other discussion, but I have a really hard time distinguishing between gen and slash, and whether to put a "&" or a "/". Because some fics I'm totally writing in sexual tension that never gets acted on in the course of the fic, and people tell me, "Oh, this is definitely gen." And then I do the same thing in a different fandom and people tell me, "Oh, this is definitely a shippy fic," even though there was no kissing and no declaration of feelings or anything. Imo, both the fics were shippy, because I wrote them because I like shippy things where feelings don't get acted on.
So, anyway, what I mean is that the solid conclusions you're talking about work in certain types of fics, where there is a solid pairing the fic is actually about, but I often feel misleading when I put up tags, because I'm trying to tag how other people seem to want and not what I think my fic really is, or anyway, not the intentions with which I wrote it.
by the genre "fanfiction" or the genre "slash fiction" or the genre "superhero femslash," for example, but rather by the particular conventions of a very specific subset of stories.
Yes! You have articulated a point I attempted to touch on but not very well. This is what I meant by the Avengers highschool AU--there are certain very specific tropes, or certain tropes used in a certain fandom, and that becomes a genre all by itself, or at least, as you say, a set of conventions.
Avengers highschool AU might've been a bad example, since I don't know if that's actually become a Thing, but yeah, something like Veela!Draco is a better example.
lots of people write what's been called Issue Fic, where the fic addresses, in narrative, an issue within the fandom.
I have to admit I often feel sort of at a loss when I run into these. Somehow, either because I'm a slow reader, or because I'm oblivious, or probably plenty other reasons, I never seem to be reading what everyone else is reading. Even when I want to be, like I'm not fast enough to catch up with what everyone's reading, so when I run into Issue Fic I don't know what it's responding to, and I can feel it's a response to something except I don't know what. I get very confused; it makes me sad; I wish they came with appendices.
I wanted to write one where they were both women, and got together as self-identified male lesbians (that fic is outdated and kind of crappy in retrospect
Well but it sounds cool.
I remember one where Tony's soulbonded to Obadiah, which is all about how soulbonds are creepy and Tony needs to get away from his soulbonded lifemate and find a nice guy who isn't connected to him by a mystical bond
OH THAT IS AWESOME.
they depend on people also being familiar with the sub-sub-sub-genre, the current tenor in the fandom, the other fics that used this trope, etc.
Yeah! Yeah.
it gives fanfic authors a unique opportunity to play with characterization, tropes, and especially all the things that are "common knowledge" in the fandom or in the sub-fandom for the pairing or whatever.
Well, and this is interesting, because the reason we can do this isn't so much because it's fanfic as because fandom is a community. It's because everyone is sitting around talking about the same thing and building off of each other. And you could do that with an original story as well, except it doesn't happen as often, because a new person wandering in would be completely lost. I said I often feel lost in fandom, and I almost always do, but I always feel I at least have a little bit of knowledge because look, I know who Bruce and Tony and Steve and Natasha are, and I have stuff to say about them, whereas if fandom were talking original fic, I wouldn't.
This is how fandom is a lot more like oral tradition than anything in the last century or so, because oral stories were stories everyone already knew, and that's how they remembered them.
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I think it was a perfect example, actually, because it isn't all that common (although I've seen some). But that means I have very few associations with actual Avengers high school AUs, but I still absolutely recognised and agreed with the expectations you listed - of course Loki is going to be the sullen angsty art kid. It would really super surprise me if Loki, say, stabbed Thor in the side, in an Avengers high school AU, even though that is canonically a thing he is into doing, because that's not how angsty brotherly relationships go in HS AUs.
Anyway, hi, this post is really interesting! And there's a bit too much for me to actually engage with it, which is why I'm crashing a comment thread with a tiny specific point instead.
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I wish there were more AUs like this, though. I mean, AUs that are wildly different in settings and situation, but tried harder to stay really true to character. But the ones like that usually make all the same things happen that happen in canon, and then it doesn't make sense. It's a hard thing to do, I guess.
there's a bit too much for me to actually engage with it
I have a huge problem with this. Like, I think of something I wanna talk about and then it becomes TEN THINGS I wanna talk about, and other people maybe wanna talk about it too, but by the time I get done saying what I have to say everyone's just kind of standing there blinking because they've been listening to me pontificate for the past TWO HOURS. Or whatever. I try to shorten things and I just can't; I generally give it up as pointless. This is why I'm on tenterhooks for dw's queued posting, because I would split a post like this into five segments and say: "Stayed tuned for this month's segment on dramatic irony!" I've tried to just save the whole thing on my computer and then do a little post at a time, but then I never post any of it. Idek why!
Wow, and there is a very verbose passage on how much it upsets me that I am overly verbose.