i'd want to note that the push for social justice in fannish work is a relatively recent, couple of years old thing (if we don't count slash itself as such), and it's mostly moves from meta to works, not the other way around. though, of course, certain percent of fannish works is and was always pointed to challenging canon, questioning it (did you see women's work, by the way? it's a pretty amazing meta-vid).
i'd say fanfic is not as much about being tied to source text - you can read stuff in fandoms you know no further than wiki page about (some write like this too, though it's considered to be in a bad taste) as about tied to overall fannish context, some sort of meta-language of fanfiction, set of conditions and parameters and cliches everybody agrees to. there's something... immediately, stylistically spotable about fanfic, whatever genre it's in, though it's hard to quantify.
Yes, the political side of fannish work is recent, but. In this case I'd say that the action of writing itself is a political statement regardless of the author's intention, message etc.
>> immediately, stylistically spotable about fanfic
I agree. This is why I hoped for the stylistical, philological analysis of fanfiction, not sociological. I want to find something in the works themselves, not around them, that would classify them as fanfic (as separate from postmodern texts) - same as we do not need to study Tolstoy's life to pronounce War and Peace an epic novel.
If I may... That thing that, I agree, can almost always be spotted, is the same thing you spot when comparing copy to an original. There are some subtle differences and, almost invariably, these differences are not to the copy's quality. The one explanation I have is that as long as you are trying to copy something, you are limited in ways to express your thoughts. And if fanfic writers want to do something different, they more often then not start twisting and tweaking the original book, rather then coming up with the idea of their own.
To illustrate this point, there is one book I can think about that is not worse (indeed, some would say - better in literary qualities) then the original, and in that book the writer really made the world and the characters his own. To the extent where he continued to write sequels to his book, which also proved quite good. Can you guess which book I am talking about?
It's more like this: the writer takes the world and the characters, then makes some subtle changes that make the world and characters his own. There are also quite a few original characters and original ideas. The original work is rather an inspiration for the new book, kind of like with poetry. The thing is, the writer who can do all that is not likely to spend time writing a lot of fanfics. S/he would rather write something original.
Oh, and one more thing. In a good original work, there are always something left out of the story. The "лакуны" that the other post is writing about. That's exactly what allows the reader to exersize brain and imagination. Fanfic often leave nothing out, rather, they fill out the blanks. There are not much work for readers' brains there.
intuitively, off the top of my head i'd say it's, mmm, focus on two (rarely more, even in gen fics) protagonists and their relationships, with the assumption that the reader knows the context of their relationship with the world around, and everything else - worldbuilding (even in au fics with pretty intricate one), relationship with other people, plot, any kind of message - is done as a backdrop and is... i don't know how to formulate it, markedly less weightly. it's not a writing quality question, just the way of putting accents.
or, alternately: 90% of fanfiction is, mmm, kink-related (not necessarily in sexual sense). say, hurt/comfort fic can be novel-lenght, have intricate plot and multi-cast, and yet it's ultimate goal would be evoking certain set of emotions - and thus would differ from, say, fantasy novel where protagonist gets injured at some point. or: fanfic usually works with emotional plot (setting - conflict - resolution) rather than event-oriented one.
The part about the goal being evoking a set of emotions - I'm not sure we should concern ourselves about the goal though. It is not remarkedly different from a Harlequin romance, is it? Or even, say, Galsworthy's novellas ;)
And emotional plot vs event-oriented one, hm, this isn't fanfic prerogative. Lyrical prose does not by itself a fanfic make. Take The Left Hand of Darkness - how much is there of emotions vs events? I mean, events are there but they obviously are a vehicle to carry emotional growth to its extent.
I'm not sure we should concern ourselves about the goal though
hmmm. i'm looking at it like this: when author's writing, say, arranged marriage regency au fic about char a and char b, they're not trying to tell a new story: they're trying to get certain response by retelling certain archetype. which seems to me to be 90% of fiction, though, of course, there're also character exploration, plot-twisters, gap-fillers...
again, it's hard to quantify because the fic world is BIG, anime and manga-based fandoms work differently from western media ones, all of them differ from text-based ones, bandom rps is vastly different from actor-based one and so on. too many variables. still i'd say that the underlying idea is to use the characters - in most suitable way - to fit certain narrative so you can enjoy both the re-enacting and your favourites doing said re-enacting. see the popularity of 'something!au'- see Our Heroes doing cinderella! matrix! heist movie! and so on.
as for lyrical prose, i think i've painted myself into the corner by wrong wording, but i don't know how to say it better. relationship-oriented? no, don't know, abandoning this line of thoughts :D
>> the underlying idea is to use the characters - in most suitable way - to fit certain narrative
Yes, that seems to be the general idea. And I like this direction of analysis much better than the "fandom is for comfort" one - not because the other is not true, but because it depends on the immediate circumstances around the text rather than on the text itself.
I mean, by analysing the text we can (probably, I'm no specialist) establish that it so closely matches a certain type of narrative that it could not be unintentional. And there lies the proof of its fanficness (fanficity?)
But what will remain from the "fandom=comfort zone" idea, if we analyze the text, say, 10 years hence, when fandom no longer exists or no one recognizes the hurt-comfort trope, or there is no adult alive who has not watched HP saga - in other words, when we are left alone with the text? If people will continue reading it, would it follow that it is literature, not fanfic?
I agree that the fandom as a whole has too many disparate entities - and I know next to nothing about bandoms and others. So yes, I'm talking about a tiny part of the whole.
but i see the 'comfort' part of fanfiction in it's predictability, not it's relationship with canon. suffering protagonist in hurt/comfort fiс would get comforted or healed, two lovers would get reunited, kinky relationship would work out for the best. even darkfics give what promised - you see the 'character death' warning, you know what you're going to get and what sort of emotional kick you're reading it for (and hence the importance of warnings and tags, the feeling of betrayal when you're not warned for something - i would accept tragic death in the book, but unwarned one in fic would get me enraged at the author, even if it would serve it's purpose in the story). it's less about relationship with source, or how much it strays from it or twists the original narrative, and more about underlying assumption that author would fulfill the promise of certain narrative.
Yes, well, the relationship with canon a part of comfort is NOT :) But for me the comfort comes from more than predictability - it is also a non-judgmental atmosphere in which kinks are not a thing to be ashamed of and concealed. There are people who proclaim that they are reading fics for their novel psychological insights, quick wit, postmodernist play of ideas, literary excellence and other exalted qualities, and I do not doubt that at some point all that may be found there - depends on what level the reader was before the fic. But - honestly and maturely - I have some psychological needs that have to be met until they disappear (and I work on that), so fics are a needful thing and it is nice not to be ashamed of it.
I remember the time when I went through exceedingly messy separation, divorce and remarriage - I was not able to read anything more profound than Harlequin novels, even longer works of Nora Roberts were beyond me :) - and I had to conceal the sordid state of affairs or listen unpleasant remarks about my taste. Well, it is nice not to be ashamed anymore. Though now I have grown so independent that I can admit liking SF/F, anime, Nora Roberts, harlequins and fanfics :) Kudos to fandom, I say.
oh, that definitely! but this is where fic ties into social context rather than textual one. and, well - there're quick wit, play of ideas, literary excellence and so on to find in fics, if you know where to look and how to play, but at the ground it's kink-fulfilling, open playground for everybody, and hooray for that :)
Your post is amazing! Is it OK to make a link to it in a separate post?
Yes, of course fandom is a social tool - I do not contend that it is not - or if I do, it is more to separate the false assumptions from sound arguments.
But so are Midrashim - a way to deal with an unthinkable notion that the G-d we believe in allowed _that_ to happen. It is a way of self-assertion, of recognising the problem, of dealing with it in a way that diminishes the amount of pain in the world (rather than not recognising or insisting it is as it should be).
But the social context did not preclude Midrashim becoming an inspiration and a model for literature: for stories of I.L.Perets, M.M Seforim, G. Meyrink and M.Chabon. So I have a hope for fanfic still :) Of course, same as happens with SF/F, when it is good enough, universal enough, it is no longer SF/F (there is a nice article about the difference: http://zhurnal.lib.ru/c/chigirinskaja_o_a/chronotop.shtml).
some fics do become original novels with serial numbers filed off (though this rarely works well), and, what's interesting enough, many prominent ficwriters migrate to fantasy (mostly ya fantasy): ladyjaida did (pretty fascinating) havemercy, cassandra claire writes her city of bones series, mistful writes demon's lexicon, astolat started writing o'brian au fic and ended up with temeraire series, and so on. and they bring good parts of fanfiction - freedom of playing, awareness of sexuality and different orientation, skills of working with cliches in new ways - with them and turn them into something new.
so on one level fanfiction culture is something of a storytelling tradition where social aspect is more important - i chatfic stories with friends for the pleasure of shared re-telling, not any writing goals - and on the other, for people who get talent for that, it goes a bit further and become a very flexible writing workshop, and some people bring fascinating social agenda in, and so on, and so on, anything for everybody.
(and this is why when outsider dismiss the whole culture as low quality, useless and harmful to original excercise i get peeved, but don't we all :D)
ну какие могут быть мои мысли, когда я сама пишу фанфики? ;))) я - та самая типичная аудитория от 15 до 35, которая читает и пишет фанфикшн только что вот очередной написала))
на мой взгляд у redtigra как минимум две очень точные идеи: 1. что фанфики создают определенную comfort zone со своими правилами для комфорта в первую очередь - но комфорт возникает не обязательно в результате следования канону, в этом я согласна уже с вами 2. и что там, где текст вытесняет автора (и можно воспринимать этот текст, не зная первоисточника), фанфик кончается и начинается литература с другой стороны, это во многом - вопрос определений
>> можно воспринимать этот текст, не зная первоисточника
Проблема с такими первоисточниками, как Библия, например, в том, что трудно найти аудиторию для контрольного эксперимента, чтоб не знала канон, но читала на нужном языке :)
с удовольствием прочитала обсуждение тут в комментариях выше и в посте у redtigra это не вы мне недавно писали, что у вас плохо получается формулировать? ;)))
Прочитал до места, где redtigra признает что не собирается отделять постмодернистов от фанфикеров... вернулся, посмотрел заголовок - "Фанфик и литература". Выходит, что даже попытки описать фанфик не могут обойтись без привычных фанфикерских приемчиков.
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blades_of_grass) wrote2010-08-10 10:02 am
no subject
i'd say fanfic is not as much about being tied to source text - you can read stuff in fandoms you know no further than wiki page about (some write like this too, though it's considered to be in a bad taste) as about tied to overall fannish context, some sort of meta-language of fanfiction, set of conditions and parameters and cliches everybody agrees to. there's something... immediately, stylistically spotable about fanfic, whatever genre it's in, though it's hard to quantify.
no subject
Yes, the political side of fannish work is recent, but. In this case I'd say that the action of writing itself is a political statement regardless of the author's intention, message etc.
>> immediately, stylistically spotable about fanfic
I agree. This is why I hoped for the stylistical, philological analysis of fanfiction, not sociological. I want to find something in the works themselves, not around them, that would classify them as fanfic (as separate from postmodern texts) - same as we do not need to study Tolstoy's life to pronounce War and Peace an epic novel.
no subject
That thing that, I agree, can almost always be spotted, is the same thing you spot when comparing copy to an original. There are some subtle differences and, almost invariably, these differences are not to the copy's quality.
The one explanation I have is that as long as you are trying to copy something, you are limited in ways to express your thoughts. And if fanfic writers want to do something different, they more often then not start twisting and tweaking the original book, rather then coming up with the idea of their own.
To illustrate this point, there is one book I can think about that is not worse (indeed, some would say - better in literary qualities) then the original, and in that book the writer really made the world and the characters his own. To the extent where he continued to write sequels to his book, which also proved quite good. Can you guess which book I am talking about?
no subject
Well, it would seem then that the farther fanfic is from the original, the better it could be. I'm not sure it is so.
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Also, think about "Buratino" :)
No, I would not formulate it this way.
It's more like this: the writer takes the world and the characters, then makes some subtle changes that make the world and characters his own. There are also quite a few original characters and original ideas. The original work is rather an inspiration for the new book, kind of like with poetry.
The thing is, the writer who can do all that is not likely to spend time writing a lot of fanfics. S/he would rather write something original.
Oh, and one more thing. In a good original work, there are always something left out of the story. The "лакуны" that the other post is writing about. That's exactly what allows the reader to exersize brain and imagination.
Fanfic often leave nothing out, rather, they fill out the blanks. There are not much work for readers' brains there.
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or, alternately: 90% of fanfiction is, mmm, kink-related (not necessarily in sexual sense). say, hurt/comfort fic can be novel-lenght, have intricate plot and multi-cast, and yet it's ultimate goal would be evoking certain set of emotions - and thus would differ from, say, fantasy novel where protagonist gets injured at some point. or: fanfic usually works with emotional plot (setting - conflict - resolution) rather than event-oriented one.
it's all very hard to formulate, i'm afraid :)
no subject
The part about the goal being evoking a set of emotions - I'm not sure we should concern ourselves about the goal though. It is not remarkedly different from a Harlequin romance, is it? Or even, say, Galsworthy's novellas ;)
And emotional plot vs event-oriented one, hm, this isn't fanfic prerogative. Lyrical prose does not by itself a fanfic make. Take The Left Hand of Darkness - how much is there of emotions vs events? I mean, events are there but they obviously are a vehicle to carry emotional growth to its extent.
no subject
hmmm. i'm looking at it like this: when author's writing, say, arranged marriage regency au fic about char a and char b, they're not trying to tell a new story: they're trying to get certain response by retelling certain archetype. which seems to me to be 90% of fiction, though, of course, there're also character exploration, plot-twisters, gap-fillers...
again, it's hard to quantify because the fic world is BIG, anime and manga-based fandoms work differently from western media ones, all of them differ from text-based ones, bandom rps is vastly different from actor-based one and so on. too many variables. still i'd say that the underlying idea is to use the characters - in most suitable way - to fit certain narrative so you can enjoy both the re-enacting and your favourites doing said re-enacting. see the popularity of 'something!au'- see Our Heroes doing cinderella! matrix! heist movie! and so on.
as for lyrical prose, i think i've painted myself into the corner by wrong wording, but i don't know how to say it better. relationship-oriented? no, don't know, abandoning this line of thoughts :D
no subject
Yes, that seems to be the general idea. And I like this direction of analysis much better than the "fandom is for comfort" one - not because the other is not true, but because it depends on the immediate circumstances around the text rather than on the text itself.
I mean, by analysing the text we can (probably, I'm no specialist) establish that it so closely matches a certain type of narrative that it could not be unintentional. And there lies the proof of its fanficness (fanficity?)
But what will remain from the "fandom=comfort zone" idea, if we analyze the text, say, 10 years hence, when fandom no longer exists or no one recognizes the hurt-comfort trope, or there is no adult alive who has not watched HP saga - in other words, when we are left alone with the text? If people will continue reading it, would it follow that it is literature, not fanfic?
I agree that the fandom as a whole has too many disparate entities - and I know next to nothing about bandoms and others. So yes, I'm talking about a tiny part of the whole.
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I remember the time when I went through exceedingly messy separation, divorce and remarriage - I was not able to read anything more profound than Harlequin novels, even longer works of Nora Roberts were beyond me :) - and I had to conceal the sordid state of affairs or listen unpleasant remarks about my taste. Well, it is nice not to be ashamed anymore. Though now I have grown so independent that I can admit liking SF/F, anime, Nora Roberts, harlequins and fanfics :) Kudos to fandom, I say.
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Yes, of course fandom is a social tool - I do not contend that it is not - or if I do, it is more to separate the false assumptions from sound arguments.
But so are Midrashim - a way to deal with an unthinkable notion that the G-d we believe in allowed _that_ to happen. It is a way of self-assertion, of recognising the problem, of dealing with it in a way that diminishes the amount of pain in the world (rather than not recognising or insisting it is as it should be).
But the social context did not preclude Midrashim becoming an inspiration and a model for literature: for stories of I.L.Perets, M.M Seforim, G. Meyrink and M.Chabon. So I have a hope for fanfic still :) Of course, same as happens with SF/F, when it is good enough, universal enough, it is no longer SF/F (there is a nice article about the difference: http://zhurnal.lib.ru/c/chigirinskaja_o_a/chronotop.shtml).
no subject
some fics do become original novels with serial numbers filed off (though this rarely works well), and, what's interesting enough, many prominent ficwriters migrate to fantasy (mostly ya fantasy):
so on one level fanfiction culture is something of a storytelling tradition where social aspect is more important - i chatfic stories with friends for the pleasure of shared re-telling, not any writing goals - and on the other, for people who get talent for that, it goes a bit further and become a very flexible writing workshop, and some people bring fascinating social agenda in, and so on, and so on, anything for everybody.
(and this is why when outsider dismiss the whole culture as low quality, useless and harmful to original excercise i get peeved, but don't we all :D)
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я - та самая типичная аудитория от 15 до 35, которая читает и пишет фанфикшн
только что вот очередной написала))
на мой взгляд у redtigra как минимум две очень точные идеи:
1. что фанфики создают определенную comfort zone со своими правилами для комфорта в первую очередь - но комфорт возникает не обязательно в результате следования канону, в этом я согласна уже с вами
2. и что там, где текст вытесняет автора (и можно воспринимать этот текст, не зная первоисточника), фанфик кончается и начинается литература
с другой стороны, это во многом - вопрос определений
ну и сравнительный оффтопик
а как вы относитесь к производственным романам-пэйрингу ДМ/ГГ? я тут нашла на днях обалденный фанфик, теперь всем его советую
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2618329/1/The_Politicians_Wife
no subject
Проблема с такими первоисточниками, как Библия, например, в том, что трудно найти аудиторию для контрольного эксперимента, чтоб не знала канон, но читала на нужном языке :)
Спасибо, почитаю с удовольствием :)
no subject
http://chipsaestrella.livejournal.com/29897.html?thread=133833#t133833
:)
с удовольствием прочитала обсуждение тут в комментариях выше и в посте у redtigra
это не вы мне недавно писали, что у вас плохо получается формулировать? ;)))
no subject
насчет формулировок - спасибо, но на самом деле они _очень_ плохие. в силу плохого знакомства с предметом хотя бы :(
no subject
Выходит, что даже попытки описать фанфик не могут обойтись без привычных фанфикерских приемчиков.