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
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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I will say that for SPN in particular, there remains a fair bit of fic almost dependent on dramatic irony that I enjoy, and that's outside POV fic. The Tomato Plant Don't Grow Mangoes by
In general, though, I would say I prefer character knowledge to character ignorance. So.
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I just watched Teen Wolf. Like all of it. Last week or something, so that I could comprehend things such as this. I LOVE STILES's dad. And Stiles. They are the bestest parts, so this fic looks awesome.
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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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As you say, outsider POVs would be a really great way to establish dramatic irony using canon knowledge without recapitulating dramatic irony that exists in canon. I'm not sure what to think of that, since I tend to be pretty uninterested in outsider POVs. They're hard to pull off. I love what you say about they're being a lens, not a canvas, though; that's a great way to phrase that. I'll have to try those fics out.
Finding Things Out are some of my favorite scenes too, but that's why I like dramatic irony. Basically it's a big ramp up to the big Finding Things Out scene I'm waiting and waiting and waiting for. That said, in the Batman fic I mentioned, I skipped right over writing the Finding Things Out scene. I think a lot of people were reading it for the Finding Things Out scene, but I was writing it because I really did just like the tension of knowing something the POV character didn't. What I loved about it was I tried to leave so much for the reader to have to figure out.
ANYWAY this is fascinating. I had to assume there were plenty of people who probably didn't love dramatic irony as much as me. I LOVE CHARACTER IGNORANCE. I just hate it when characters are stupid, and sometimes it's so hard to write ignorance without it also being stupid.
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1) What are some fanfics that make good use of the reader's canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? (Links?)
...um, I'll have to get back to you on that!
2) What are some bad uses of dramatic irony that annoy you?
The main thing is when dramatic irony requires characters to miss things they should be able to figure out, or hide things from each other that they have no in-character reason to hide. (Especially when this involves what is supposed to be a loving and healthy relationship, being founded on deception, with no reason for it except STORY. I plowed through A Wizard On Mars when it came out despite a large part of the middle of the book being about People Keep Secrets For No Reason and then it turned out that they were acting OOC because MAGIC, which, at least she acknowledged the problem? But still...
Which is the other main thing that annoys me: when it's being lazy. When people are using dramatic irony as their main plot driver and don't bother building suspense/interest any other way.
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?
I LOVE DRAMATIC IRONY. I'm sure it's partly the know-it-all thing! But also because it adds an extra layer to everything that's going on in the narrative, which makes it a richer reading experience (at least in the sense of rich desserts, if not philosophical depth...)
4) What are some other ways to create dramatic irony?
Here's one you left out: Spoilers! Since "well-spoiled" is my standard way of consuming media, it's something I'm used to, but even for people who avoid spoilers the first time through are likely to re-read or re-watch at some point, and then the narrative has to be compelling even when the reader already knows the ending, so it's a useful skill to be able to write as if the reader already knows everything, even when there's nothing yet in the narrative to give it away.
This is an especially useful skill when writing in serial forms (even as a book series) for publication - the author can't know if the reader will have access to previous parts of the story, so it's a mark of a really good series, at least for me, if every part of a story work for both new readers and old readers, but in different ways. (This is a pretty difficult skill, really, but I think a valuable one - and one fanwriters writing serially tend to get lazy about - on the internet, anybody can look up the earlier installations... but fanwriters are pulling on the same tensions when they write stories where "you don't need to know canon" or crossovers where people who only know one canon are encouraged to read.
To pull off sort of the same effect entirely within a narrative, there's writing-out-of-order - if you put the ending first and then skip back, and various tricks like that, you can have the reader know all sorts of things the POV character doesn't, while still staying in close POV. (And not just about what's going to happen next; if future character knows things about the past that past character doesn't, you get the same effect.) This does get used in fanworks; actually, I've seen several fics lately (and I have no idea if it's one small group doing this or part of a wider trend - see how poor my memory for that kind of thing is) where a fic consists of a bunch of short scenes told out of order, but each scene labeled with a number or a timestamp that tells where in the timeline it is. These can either work really well for me, or really badly.
5) What are some profics/movies/tv/other media that make great use of dramatic irony? Was it nail-biting?
...thinking about it, it's really really hard for me to separate out "this narrative used dramatic irony really well" from "external factors like spoilers and genre awareness made this work well for me as dramatic irony." Like I'm currently enjoying the dramatic irony in my first read of Les Miserables? But it's actually only dramatic irony because I'm spoiled, I think Victor Hugo actually thinks he's foreshadowing sudden plot twists, not writing dramatic irony.
6) What are your thoughts on how to set up a narrator as unreliable?
Write a really in-character, realistic narrator! Everybody's inner narrative is unreliable!
...or rather, I think there's a difference between "writing a good unreliable narrator" and "writing an unreliable narrator that the majority of your audience will notice is unreliable"...
7) Do AUs make more use of dramatic irony through canon knowledge, or genre expectation, or does it just depend on the AU?
I think it really depends on the AU - a lot of AUs depend heavily on genre tropes and on following canon closely, but AUs can also go wildly off those paths, and end up almost completely away from those sources of subtext.
8) What are your thoughts on fanfic as a genre?
I like it? :D
9) Do you consciously use canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? Or does it just happen?
Sort of in-between? Now that you've got me thinking about it.... I consciously play on the reader's canon knowledge, and genre knowledge, to add extra meaning and extra suspense to a story (And since I like peppering my stuff without outside references, when I'm feeling self-indulgence I draw on knowledge of an entirely different canon.) But I tend to not think about what I'm doing in terms of dramatic irony? When I'm consciously writing dramatic irony it tends to come out as identity porn, honestly...
10) What are your thoughts on dramatic irony vs reader expectations? Is it useful to make a distinction? Is there a distinction, etc
Okay kind of off-topic for the question, but: one interesting thing about fanfic/canon knowledge vs. dramatic irony in original work is that in fanwork, you don't actually have to put in the big reveal. I mean, I love reveal scenes, they are the best, but, for example, you can write a story about Batman and Bruce and Commissioner Gordon that is all about the Batman/Bruce identity divide, without ever putting anything in the story that explictly reveals (or even hints particularly strongly) that Batman is Bruce. And that works because you can assume all of your readers already know the basics of Bruce and Batman and Gordon. And that can let you write stories that are built on dramatic irony that are differently structured, and that have a very different flow, than any story you can write outside fandom, which almost has to confront things more directly in order to show that there's anything to confront.
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I started thinking about this over on lj because someone pointed out Shakespeare uses dramatic irony a lot. Which, he does, but there's a whole other level with Shakespeare, since everyone performing Shakespeare has got to know that the audience will come in knowing the play. So, spoilers for a novel, it's knowledge the audience has that the author hasn't prepared for the audience to have, but a play--the play isn't written as if the audience knows it, but it's performed as if it is. And a really good playwright will attempt to write to both things, I suppose, since plays are meant to be performed over and over in a way that novels aren't meant to be reread over and over.
As far as serial form goes, I'm not sure I'd say internet writers are lazy? Because if you're talking about a serial that is one work, like a WIP--chapters from serial books didn't necessarily stand alone in the 19th c, either. There were some attempts to make each chapter a bit of its own narrative, more so than in some WIPs online, but I mean, Les Mis is a serial, and imo it's pretty complicated; there are some parts that just definitely wouldn't make sense on their own. Maybe you think those serial writers were lazy too, by imo that's just a different form/medium of fiction, and adheres to different rules.
Though maybe we just differ on that opinion anyway, because even if you're not talking about single-work WIPs, but rather fic series--I'm not sure I agree that a series is "really good" if the books/stories can be consumed individually as well as separately. It is a great skill to be able to write that way, but so much about book lengths have to do with marketing. Some authors end up writing a trilogy at 250 pages each just because no publisher would buy their 600 page novel, or their two novels of 300 pages each, you know? And therefore the story is 150 pages longer than it needed to be just 'cause of money. I personally think that's a shame, though I suppose an argument could be made that "good writing" works within the parameters of the market.
where a fic consists of a bunch of short scenes told out of order, but each scene labeled with a number or a timestamp that tells where in the timeline it is.
HA. Well, I'm glad to hear there's a recent rash of it, because I was thinking of doing a story like this, and was hesitant. I fared very well writing non-linear, abstract things in Buffy fandom, but outside of that fandom I feel like people have looked at me funny for trying it. Which makes me sad! I sometimes find non-linear stories very frustrating if they don't make sense or if I can't figure out why the author wrote it non-linearly, but when done for a reason and done well, it can just be so amazing.
Les Mis
I read the book years and years ago because I loved (and still love, no shame) the Liam Neeson movie. The movie is very heavy on Valjean and Javert and very skimpy on revolutionaries and Thenardiers, so I was DEEPLY SURPRISED by many of the developments concerning Eponine and Marius etc. But so much of that stuff relies so heavily on coincidence, I feel like it might be better to read it spoiled. Then you're ready for it and gone way past the part where you're saying, "BUT THE ODDS OF THAT HAPPENING ARE NON-EXISTENT!" and you can just enjoy it.
I love that book deeply, though. Changed my life.
"writing a good unreliable narrator" and "writing an unreliable narrator that the majority of your audience will notice is unreliable".
I'm interested in this. Do you mean if you write it well, people won't notice? I'm curious about it partly because I agree with you--if you write it in-character, it's always gonna be unreliable. At least, if you're using a really limited third or first person. Because I almost always write in limited third, all of my narrators are unreliable, but I rarely actively think about them being unreliable. But I've had some weird moments with a series I'm writing now where people are like, "But this isn't true!" And I'm all, "Okay, but I don't understand why you think the narrator can be trusted?" And then they're like, "Oh! An unreliable narrator! I didn't know!" And it makes me wonder whether I should have done more to show he's unreliable, which is weird since I didn't make him purposely unreliable; I just wrote his thoughts how I thought they would be. /whining
When I'm consciously writing dramatic irony it tends to come out as identity porn, honestly...
And that is some of the best kind.
without ever putting anything in the story that explicitly reveals (or even hints particularly strongly) that Batman is Bruce.
Yeah! Exactly! The Batman story was much easier for me to write, because I knew everyone knew Batman was Bruce Wayne. When I tried to write a similar story for Harry Potter it was far more difficult, because no one had a canonical secret identity so I had to strongly hint what the secret identity was to get the reader on the same page. Lot more work than the Batman story was. And the Batman story was cooler, imo.
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As someone who was perpetually reading series out of order from the library, or picking up one Superman comic at a yard sale and never finding the rest, or catching one episode of a TV show but not having time to follow it every week, or etc., it's a skill I'm fairly passionate about and one that I do lament is being lost in this age of all-information-at-our-fingertips. (I could go on at length about What's Wrong With Modern Television And Comics or put in a Hugo-worthy digression about class and access to stories, but I'll be kind and refrain...)
But being able to rely on most of your audience knowing everything that came before has led to some brilliant new possibilities, too, it's definitely not all one way.
Les Mis actually wasn't a serial, unless you count a one-month wait between the first two volumes and the last three, even though it seems like it ought to have been - Hugo was apparently very insistent that it be published all in one go. Several of the major foriegn-language versions came out in one chunk at the same time, too. I've been actually thinking about that as I go - some of the structural choices he made, and how they would have worked the same/differently if it had been serialized the way Dickens was.
(I am reading it all the way for the first time right now! I dipped my toes in as a teenager but never went all the way, and am kind of regretting it, because it's amazing.)
As for unreliable narrators: No, I don't necessarily think those two things are opposites! Just that ... well, as you've experienced, if you write an unreliable narrator without constantly putting up blinky neon signs that say "UNRELIABLE! UNRELIABLE!" about them, a significant proportion of the audience will simply assume they're reliable.
But putting up giant blinky neon signs is not always the smoothest narrative choice. Sometimes it is, but not always. So I guess this sort of doubles back to what you were saying about reader expectations and about writing a double story depending on what the readers know as well as what the characters know? Or do you want to just write the story you want to write, and ignore the part of the audience that gets it "wrong"? Or can "unreliable audience" be an essential part of "unreliable narrator"? Some of the more effective unreliable narrators are meant to have a big Dramatic Irony reveal at the end, in which case you *want* to fool your audience... So basically I am still thinking about this, but mainly, if you're writing someone who you know is unreliable, audience expectations is something to keep in mind?
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Well, I for one would read it and enjoy it. Though I should probably just do a post about serial narrative. I totally thought Les Mis was a serial; I'm really surprised it wasn't. Personally, I'm really glad about the direction in which tv is moving. I can see arguments against it in favor of accessibility, but I feel like tv is still accessible because the story is still coming out in individual episodes. Though I suppose once we get to point where tv is obsolete and the shows we're enjoying now were all just made for DVD, we'd be back to the problem of the unserialized novel.
because it's amazing
I'm so happy! You're not the only one on my flist working their way through for the first time, and it just fills me with glee. I never really had anyone to talk to about it when I first read it. Sadly, now a lot of the details have gone out of my head, but it's still nice to hear people talk about it.
if you're writing someone who you know is unreliable, audience expectations is something to keep in mind?
Yes, you're right of course. I think maybe I'm just sort of confused and bummed out about the fact that when you're dealing with a really close third or first person, the audience doesn't just assume it's an unreliable narrator. As you said, POV is subjective; you're never gonna get an objective truth when you're inside someone's head. That audiences would have a different expectation is ridiculous, and yet I can't blame them, since I do think that many first and close third person narrators in lit are meant to be "true". I suppose I should just suck it up and deal with it!
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I realized reading this post that I love playing with dramatic irony based on canon knowledge. I wrote a couple comicverse Tony Stark fics that were set during the time that Tony hadn't come out as Iron Man, and I specified in the notes that they were set at a time that Tony hadn't come out as Iron Man -- because a large amount of the tension in both stories derives from the POV character (Emma Frost in one case, Steve Rogers in another) figuring out that Tony is Iron Man, while Tony continues to lie about it. I needed that note because the conflict in the stories literally doesn't make sense to a reader who (like someone whose knowledge of Tony might be based entirely on the movies) doesn't realize Tony has a secret identity.
For an even more specific canon example, I have a Fullmetal Alchemist story that's based on something that happens between Roy and Riza in canon, but is told from the point of view of a third character (Hughes), and it's structured as a mystery in which Hughes is trying to figure out what's happened with the two of them, which canon-savvy readers would already know. In that case, I actively got beta readers (and tried to encourage people to read the story) who didn't know the canon because I wanted it to work equally well whether a reader knew the canon or not.
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So I assume you like Captive Prince. ;o)
I just found myself wondering if I would ever read a romance in which a female POV character actually had a concept that people were sometimes attracted to her
I do think these exist. I have found, when it comes to romance novels, that there are lots of sub-genres of tropes, as well as subject matter. For instance, Virginial!Heroine is one of the fave sub-genres that spans multiple subject!sub-genres--you'll find it in Regency, modern, "chick-lit", Harlequin, fantasy, etc. But Experienced!Savvy!Heroine is another sub-genre, and while smaller, exists in all categories. It is more common in the modern ones, and in the dirtier ones. And while it's totally realistic that a virginal!heroine would know perfectly well when people are attracted to her and know just what to do with it, you're much more likely to find that attitude among the experienced!savvy!heroines. Which is stupid but whatever.
I do enjoy that trope, but hate it when it makes people look stupid, and I also hate how it's so overdone. Recently I've been reading a lot of Teen Wolf AUs, not because I enjoy the show so much as because I knew it would be a way to get some long, USTy, tropey-yet-original romance (that this is how I satisfy my romance novel urges is HILARIOUS to me). I've actually been surprised by the opposite thing happening in these AUs. I'm so used to character A saying flat out, "I want to sleep with you!" and character B saying, "I wonder if he wants to sleep with me?" in response that I should be glad to get something different, but I'm not. I'm terrified. Because now character A is saying, "Do you mind telling me the time?" and character B is saying, "He wants to jump me!" All of the sudden all the platonic, nice things I say to people not-so-secretly me, "Sex now!"
figuring out that Tony is Iron Man, while Tony continues to lie about it.
ahhhhhh this is awesome; I'm going to read that Steve one.
I wanted it to work equally well whether a reader knew the canon or not.
Why? I'm just curious as to whether it was because you were gauging your potential readership, or whether the integrity of the story depended on it, etc.
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Maybe I would? I looked at the fanlore page and that's not EXACTLY the context I was thinking of, but it kind of makes sense. . .
I'm so used to character A saying flat out, "I want to sleep with you!" and character B saying, "I wonder if he wants to sleep with me?" in response that I should be glad to get something different, but I'm not. I'm terrified. Because now character A is saying, "Do you mind telling me the time?" and character B is saying, "He wants to jump me!" All of the sudden all the platonic, nice things I say to people not-so-secretly me, "Sex now!"
Ha ha, that's sort of amazing, actually.
The Steve + Tony story I wrote is Daedalus (and now that I look I realize the AO3 version doesn't have any of the author's notes, so it's possibly confusing to people who don't understand what verse it's in or why Tony is lying about his identity.)
Why? I'm just curious as to whether it was because you were gauging your potential readership, or whether the integrity of the story depended on it, etc.
Primarily for the story, because it had to make sense from Hughes's point of view. But also because I was writing it for an exchange and because I wanted to foist it on some people who didn't know the canon. And also just for the fun of seeing if I could do it.
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Like you, I get super frustrated by prolonged, "I love her, but no way she loves me back!"
I realized this is tied to my love for emotionally brave characters. When somebody can pull their socks up, take a breath, and say out loud, "Hey. I'm attracted," that's really sexy and sometimes makes me all verklempt with proud mama bear feelings.
I've discovered something interesting about this type of dramatic irony: lots of stories still work without it. Like, I'm reading this fantastic WIP in which the characters had a conversation somewhere around chapter four that went, "I'm totally into you, but I can't date you for professional reasons for at least a year," (n.b. shockingly, this is not a student/teacher fic!), and the other guy says, "Oh, okay," AND THEN THE NOBLE ASSHOLES STICK TO IT! And the sexual tension is stupendous.
And I'm reading this other fantastic WIP in which our heroes go on one date, and then something ridiculous and overwhelming happens in A's life. So he says, "OMG I like you so much, but I'm not going to have time to BREATHE for the foreseeable, and new relationships take work, so..." And B goes, "Okay, yeah, let's put things on hold. But I don't want to just jettison this friendship we've found, so can I come over this weekend and paint your kitchen cabinets for you while you work on the breathing thing?" And I'm like, "LET ME LOVE YOU ALL."
Then again, I'm reading a third story with basically the same plot, and I love it for basically the same reasons, except I feel it doesn't have enough wombats*. So. It's a balance.
*Wombats: useful method of solving plot and writer's block problems: whenever you are stuck, hurl another flying disgruntled wombat, i.e. obstacle, at your hero. Coined by somebody. Probably
3) Do you like dramatic irony?
Sometimes! I don't care much about, "Little does he know there's a werewolf lurking in the bushes" -- your standard scary movie-style set-up. And I have a humiliation squick, so I don't like, "Little does she know her period came a day early and the mean girls are laughing at the spot on her white shorts."
But I love it when villains don't know about the hero's secret weapon. Or when somebody's about to get a happy surprise. Or accidental eavesdroppers hearing something nice about themselves. Or someone about to get their just deserts.
I like anticipation, but not dread, if that makes sense? Some people love dread, horror films and things, and that's awesome; it's just not how my own hormones work.
5) What are some profics/movies/tv/other media that make great use of dramatic irony? Was it nail-biting?
Have you read A.S. Byatt's Possession? It's split between two time periods: a pair of Victorian poets and the present-day scholars studying them. There's a really brilliant mystery clue about a familial link between the poets and one of the scholars, but it's only mentioned a few times over the course of a huge tome: they both have veryveryvery pale blond hair. Apparently it's too subtle for some folks: when they made the movie, they made one of them a voluptuous redhead! -_-
9) Do you consciously use canon knowledge to create dramatic irony? Or does it just happen?
I'm currently writing a story set post-S2 of a four-season show. Since I started writing (you know I'm geologically slow), a ton has happened to my characters, so I keep revisiting scenes to see what I am or could be foreshadowing. I'm not revising much, because I want to keep a light touch, no anvils, but I had one scene already written that took on a whole amazing subtext all by itself. That was neat.
But I'm also having trouble figuring out my climactic scene, because narrative convention/expectation demands a certain development and payoff by the end of this story, yet most of the obvious climaxes are tied to issues the characters canonically don't resolve until later.
That's one of my favourite kinds of DI, I think, despite my current writerly frustrations. Looking at a baaaaby!character and thinking, "You think you know who you are. You haven't even begun," and finding hints of that character's future in the habits and actions of the present.
8) What are your thoughts on fanfic as a genre?
I love this question! I want to hear what you've said about it already. The only descriptor I can nail down off the top of my head is, "Fanfic has an intimate relationship with an antecedent text." Because the tricksy (and cool) thing about fanfic as genre is that it's an umbrella that contains nearly everything else we think of as a genre. You can have scifi-fanfic and mystery-fanfic and bodice-ripper-fanfic and srsbzns-fanfic.... And each, or each of its subgenres (AMTDI, romance AU, undercover cops...), has its own set of conventions, but there's little that applies to fanfic as a whole.
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True, but I think it's one of the easier shortcuts to prolonged UST, which is probably why we see it so much.
whenever you are stuck, hurl another flying disgruntled wombat, i.e. obstacle, at your hero.
I've read fic where Draco is a swan and Harry's a mermaid and then a volcano erupts and then one of them gets pregnant and then they travel in time and one of them turn into a wereswan. I thought it was weird. Then I've read fic where someone wakes up in the morning and gets coffee and goes to work and does work and talks to co-workers and has lunch and works some more and goes home and has dinner and does laundry and calls someone on the phone for 80,000 words. That's far weirder.
Or accidental eavesdroppers hearing something nice about themselves.
This is an unknink of mine. I wouldn't call it a squick, since it doesn't make me viscerally ill or anything, but I dislike it. I only mention it because I think it's interesting, the little things that we don't enjoy that other people do. I started a list of 101 Unkinks, but I could only think of 30 things.
Have you read A.S. Byatt's Possession?
I have! I thought it was weird that they didn't play up the family connection in the movie. Then again, I disliked the movie. (Though the book is excellent! Although I must say I found the Victorians more interesting than the modern scholars.)
because narrative convention/expectation demands a certain development and payoff by the end of this story, yet most of the obvious climaxes are tied to issues the characters canonically don't resolve until later.
What are your thoughts on making it AU?
Looking at a baaaaby!character and thinking, "You think you know who you are. You haven't even begun," and finding hints of that character's future in the habits and actions of the present.
This is interesting to me. I wrote this post speaking from an authorial perspective, even though I was talking about reading as well. Melannen mentioned another type of dramatic irony: spoilers. You don't really write novels with the intention of someone reading it over and over again, so if you do reread you're experiencing a dramatic irony the author didn't necessarily intend. But a good text will foreshadow things. I generally think of this as a tool to guide reader expectations, such that particular plot twists etc don't seem implausible, but it also provides a particular reward for those who reread. I must say that I've been doing this more and more--putting in tiny details that won't necessarily become clear unless someone reads the fic at least twice. It makes it more fun to write, too.
I do experience some frustration looking at baby!characters sometimes, because especially with tv it can just be so obvious that the creators didn't know where they were going with them. Sometimes it's totally fun to say, "Yes, they didn't know where this character was going, but isn't it neat how these things play into the overall picture anyway, even though it wasn't intentional?" But other times making all the pieces fit just feels like a frustrating chore.
Because the tricksy (and cool) thing about fanfic as genre is that it's an umbrella that contains nearly everything else we think of as a genre. You can have scifi-fanfic and mystery-fanfic and bodice-ripper-fanfic and srsbzns-fanfic.... And each, or each of its subgenres (AMTDI, romance AU, undercover cops...), has its own set of conventions, but there's little that applies to fanfic as a whole.
This is why I had not thought of fanfic as "genre" before
The other discussion I had about it started in a really different place.
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.
I feel like that sort of fic was how
The reason I object to that definition is that there is plenty of fic on AO3 (and elsewhere) that, like R&G, stands out and deals with other concerns than the majority of fanfic. And how it stands out or what those concerns are are diverse enough that the only reason those fics are different than R&G or Wide Sargasso Sea is that they are unpublished.
But anywhoodle, those are the conversations I've been having about fanfic and genre :o)
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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.
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IT IS DELIGHTFUL. I read it first on Stulti's rec. I wouldn't have read it otherwise. She said to me: do whatever you need to do to read past the part where you get out of the Regent's court. Skip chapters, read it backwards, go through spoilers, do whatever you need to do, and you won't regret it.
This is because the first part isn't my cuppa at all and was really icky and disappointing, when Stulti had recced it as this complex and thrilling drama that was all about POLITICS and world-building and emotional depth of characters. But seriously, once you get past the first part it's golden.
Daedalus
Bookmarked!
Primarily for the story, because it had to make sense from Hughes's point of view. But also because I was writing it for an exchange and because I wanted to foist it on some people who didn't know the canon. And also just for the fun of seeing if I could do it.
These are all sound, sensible reasons! I was just curious. When I wrote that Batman story I mentioned, I actually felt like I was being really lazy, relying on reader canon knowledge. Because it's so challenging to give your readers info that your characters can't have if you're doing a tight POV, and only a really well constructed story can be enjoyable for both the readers who know the thing and don't. But I didn't bother.
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Will put it on my radar then!
When I wrote that Batman story I mentioned, I actually felt like I was being really lazy, relying on reader canon knowledge.
While I see this could come up on general principle, I think that problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it's Batman, you know? That's not just canon-specific knowledge that is basic cultural knowledge. I don't know the specifics of your story, but if you want to write about an emotionally troubled billionaire who assumes a secret alter ego and fights crime, you don't need to invent it because the cultural work has been done already and professional writers continue to write new Batman stories every week without having to explain that Bruce Wayne is Batman. So I feel like you get a pass for that one -- the disguise is so inherent to what makes it a Batman story.
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Ja. It's a formula. Probably some folks get off on the crush fantasy, too: shy, doubt-stricken, nobody-could-ever-love-me character gets his giant reward.
...for 80,000 words. That's far weirder.
Cackle. You put it so well.
I started a list of 101 Unkinks, but I could only think of 30 things.
I started a list of squicks, too, once, but I got tired of myself and withdrew the question.
Possession... I disliked the movie.
Me, too. My biggest gripe wasn't even the Americanization of Roland, but the same gripe I had with The Hobbit: the director didn't understand why the book was funny!
What are your thoughts on making it AU?
Not this time. Next time, totally.
a good text will foreshadow
things...
All this stuff is really smart and I approve.
Sometimes it's totally fun to say, "Yes, they didn't know where this character was going, but isn't it neat how these things play into the overall picture anyway, even though it wasn't intentional?" But other times making all the pieces fit just feels like a frustrating chore.
Haha. There was a moment there in Glee fandom when folks decided that the honest-to-god best possible explanation for Blaine Anderson's oddities was that he actually was Harry Potter on the lam.
most genres only have one (really broad!) descriptor that you can nail down, right? ...romance sci fi and mystery sci fi and "literary" sci fi etc. Ursula K LeGuin will cry if you say that sci fi can't be "literary", and I probably will too.
Me three. I do think it might be important to give fanfiction genre status, because as soon as you do that, it's easier to make people understand that it's its own thing, with its own rules, which aren't necessarily the same rules by which literary fiction gets judged.
Issue Fic... 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. The reason I object to that definition is that there is plenty of fic on AO3 (and elsewhere) that, like R&G, stands out and deals with other concerns than the majority of fanfic. And how it stands out or what those concerns are are diverse enough that the only reason those fics are different than R&G or Wide Sargasso Sea is that they are unpublished.
Right. And how embedded in a time, a place, a culture and a community a story is can be harder to judge than it looks, even a couple years later. Like -- Bridget Jones' Diary? 100% Issue Fic.
I was just having this conversation offline, last weekend, about the "timelessness" of Jane Austen. JA is lousy with pop culture in-jokes that totally fly over the heads of most modern readers. She's in dialogue with her literary community every bit as much as "Take Clothes Off As Directed". A thought I personally find beautiful to contemplate.
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I just read a published, pro novel -- overall a decent novel -- where the protagonist had a *secret origin*. The hint of the secret origin is given in chapter 2 or so, in a way that immediately made me go 'that was mentioned in such a way that this will CLEARLY turn out to be the main character's secret origin,' the whole book went by with nobody mentioning the possibility and then the CLIMAX of the book was the revelation of the character's secret identity. So basically I read *this whole novel* and the payoff was something I figured out 10 pages in. (This is literally the only payoff, because it's the first book of a trilogy, to get the rest of the mytharc or the romance you have to commit to the whole series, apparently.)
And I had to wonder, "Would the book actually be more interesting if we'd gotten a viewpoint of the character who KNOWS the secret from the start?" So then the tension would be "When will the character find out this luscious tidbit that the author has shared with us?" rather than "When will the author stop assuming that we're idiots and didn't figure this out on page 10?" In other words, the author thinks they've made the book more suspenseful by keeping the secret, but it might actually be better (I DON'T KNOW, I'VE NEVER WRITTEN A BOOK, I'M JUST THINKING) if dramatic irony was allowed to do some of the work here.
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Because I'm thinking of a similar book, which would have been far less interesting had I guessed the protagonist's origin. But while I'm savvier than some readers, I'm pretty damn unsavvy, and things take me by surprise, which I like. And while I've always wanted the POV of the character who knew in this series, I would not give away that thrill of not-knowing-and-then-knowing for anything--but of course, this is from the perspective of an unwitting!reader, rather than a knowing one. If you're afraid of spoiling this book, pm me? Because I realized once I started writing this that revealing that the main character of the book I'm thinking of has a secret origin would probably ruin it for some people. (It would have for me!)
But anyway, thinking of that book and many others--I would think it would be such a hard call to make. That fic I mentioned in the original post, the one that was HP and Draco had a secret identity--I thought it was painfully obvious who Draco really was, and that I'd dropped rather too many hints. It made Harry (the POV character, who was not supposed to know what the reader knew) look like an idiot. But there were still readers taken by surprise, and readers who thought I had not let slip Draco's identity purposefully . . . versus readers who thought Harry was a dumbass for not figuring it out.
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This whole conversation makes me think of a veteran mystery writer -- and I honestly don't remember who, but it's somebody who had a lot of books under their belt -- saying that, based on their experience with mystery readers, there would be somebody who figured it out RIGHT OFF THE BAT no matter what you did, so they found it important to make sure there was more to the book than whodunit. And I've definitely found that the mysteries I enjoy are ones where the process of investigating the mystery reveals interesting things about all of the characters no matter who is the eventual culprit. (Louise Penny, who I've been reading a lot lately, is extremely good at this.)
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Or, again, maybe you just don't like mysteries! Fandom in all its infinite varieties, etc :)
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It's cousin to other kinds of dramatic tension, such as, "Who's going to survive past the end of the book?" that can be nail-biters or duds depending on how much the author respects the reader's intelligence. I rambled about this one at length a few years ago after reading
The law for that would go something like, "If a certain key outcome (such as the survival of the protagonist, or the satisfaction of the romance) is obvious simply by virtue of genre convention, POV, or somesuch, then just acknowledge it, lampshade it, and find something else onto which to hitch your suspense."