Some Rambles
Dec. 4th, 2008 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laleiaThings I have discovered recently about fandom:
1.) Some of the really good-quality Bujold fic out there comes off as something I would write -- the humor and intellectuality just a tad forced, the references to canon a tad heavy (and occur every other paragraph -- and because I have the books memorized, I pick up on all of them), the characters a tad too canon. There's no initiative taken, no hint of what the author might imagine takes place behind the scenes of canon.
2.) People with personal canon bother me. (Note how contradictory I am.) If someone writes 5-6 fanfics in a fandom, and certain bits of personal canon crop up in every single one of them, this will kind of annoy me because I like variety. (Even though sometimes I am slightly guilty of this in that I hate thinking up names, and will use the same names repeatedly for OCs.)
3.) People need to stop writing AUs. Not that they need to stop writing AUs, but 99% of romance fanfic out there is AU, Harlequin romance style, and misses out on a lot of canonical reasons why people work well together. (Even though AUs can still rock. And often do.)
4.) Well-written fanfic for small fandoms makes my day Because it is so rare. So Yuletide? Second-best part of Christmas, hands down.
5.) I write fanfic organically (in that I never plan anything and it just happens), often with specific themes/sentences in mind. This doesn't work a lot, like the Tortall fanfic I wrote last night which I read over today and my sentence that I based the fanfic around doesn't actually fit the fanfic.
6.) I have become one of those authors that I despise. I was looking at my ff.net favorite stories list, and bemoaning stories that have not been updated in 7 years, and realized that there are unfinished fanfics I have written which have not been updated in nearly as long, so I am a terrible person.
7.) Most fanfic I write is meant to show off how clever I am.
8.) This AU semi-Regency era Sailor Moon fanfic I started (but never posted, thank goodness) maybe five years ago I took a look at again before I left for China, and I have been working on and off on it during class since, only now it has evolved into an original semi-Regency romance with bisexual men, exploitation/abuse/criticism of the alpha male syndrome, polyamory, lecherous villains, very-Mary Sue-ish main character who persists in the face of evil (very self-sacrificingly, perhaps unnecessarily so, but am not sure how to convey that she is being unnecessarily so, lambasting the prototypical heroine, but am possibly too subtle about it), and secret assassin-techniques that are completely made up. I am never going to finish it, I have decided.
9.) To me, Strong Female Character means a female character who is not too minor, and who I do not dislike for any reason.
1.) Some of the really good-quality Bujold fic out there comes off as something I would write -- the humor and intellectuality just a tad forced, the references to canon a tad heavy (and occur every other paragraph -- and because I have the books memorized, I pick up on all of them), the characters a tad too canon. There's no initiative taken, no hint of what the author might imagine takes place behind the scenes of canon.
2.) People with personal canon bother me. (Note how contradictory I am.) If someone writes 5-6 fanfics in a fandom, and certain bits of personal canon crop up in every single one of them, this will kind of annoy me because I like variety. (Even though sometimes I am slightly guilty of this in that I hate thinking up names, and will use the same names repeatedly for OCs.)
3.) People need to stop writing AUs. Not that they need to stop writing AUs, but 99% of romance fanfic out there is AU, Harlequin romance style, and misses out on a lot of canonical reasons why people work well together. (Even though AUs can still rock. And often do.)
4.) Well-written fanfic for small fandoms makes my day Because it is so rare. So Yuletide? Second-best part of Christmas, hands down.
5.) I write fanfic organically (in that I never plan anything and it just happens), often with specific themes/sentences in mind. This doesn't work a lot, like the Tortall fanfic I wrote last night which I read over today and my sentence that I based the fanfic around doesn't actually fit the fanfic.
6.) I have become one of those authors that I despise. I was looking at my ff.net favorite stories list, and bemoaning stories that have not been updated in 7 years, and realized that there are unfinished fanfics I have written which have not been updated in nearly as long, so I am a terrible person.
7.) Most fanfic I write is meant to show off how clever I am.
8.) This AU semi-Regency era Sailor Moon fanfic I started (but never posted, thank goodness) maybe five years ago I took a look at again before I left for China, and I have been working on and off on it during class since, only now it has evolved into an original semi-Regency romance with bisexual men, exploitation/abuse/criticism of the alpha male syndrome, polyamory, lecherous villains, very-Mary Sue-ish main character who persists in the face of evil (very self-sacrificingly, perhaps unnecessarily so, but am not sure how to convey that she is being unnecessarily so, lambasting the prototypical heroine, but am possibly too subtle about it), and secret assassin-techniques that are completely made up. I am never going to finish it, I have decided.
9.) To me, Strong Female Character means a female character who is not too minor, and who I do not dislike for any reason.
