lunabee34

After the last post I made about the lack of femslash discussion in sga_talk, I was inspired to look a little more closely at my own writing to see how often I write het, femslash, m/m slash and gen.

( A Breakdown by Fandom )

It's quite possible I added wrong in SGA and SPN as those are the biggest categories of fic for me, but these numbers should be close enough for government work. That means of roughly 140 total pieces, I have written roughly 57 gen pieces, 49 male/male slash, 25 het, and 9 femslash.

*muses*

It's gratifying to see that I write even more gen than I assumed (and so much gen that is from the POV of women), but I really thought I had written more pieces of femslash than that. Must rememdy soon.

When it comes to Writing People Who are Not White, I do even more poorly than with femslash. One of my Spander fics is an ensemble fic and Gunn is featured there. I have written one fic from Inara's POV and one Inara/Kaylee drabble. In SGA, Ronon appears fairly regularly in my writing and there's a drabble from Miko's POV. Teyla is featured in two fics and Bates is featured in two fics as well. In SPN, I have a Gordon-centric drabble and Agent Henricksen features prominently in one of the Sam-centric gen pieces. *boggles* That's pretty pitiful, actually. So yes, resolve on that front as well.

Stay tuned....Coming up soon, Whispers! Why SGA is made of Gigantic Fail.

I've been reading metafandom posts this evening and in one of them, musesfool makes a comment about hitting the fannish sweet spot, capturing the zeitgeist. You know what she's talking about. Those writers that manage to write the pairing/plot/kink/whathaveyou that suddenly becomes the rage in fandom X.

My question is, how do we predict the fannish zeitgeist? Are the writers who do so just extremely lucky and prescient, or is something else at work?

For example, is the zeitgeist ususally episode based? (OMG Rodney has to earn back John's trust! Bring on the lemon chicken and the moves to China!) Or is it BNF-based? (notlorraine wrote some Ruby/Bella that galvanized SPN to a flurry of femslash (oh, god please, this would be nice)) Or something else? Maybe interviews with the cast or writers? (Even in a non-RPF fandom)

If you are one of these kickass persons who manages to give us what we want BEFORE WE EVEN KNOW WE WANT IT *g* please to be explaining the whys and the wherefores.

I've been following the latest wank, and normally when Wank Happens, I don't comment (usually because I know people on both sides of the issue and don't agree in a clear cut manner with either side and the thirteen year old girl in my heart gets sad when excellent writers whose work she admires argue with each other and also because I'd rather be reading about Chad Michael Murray boning Jay-Red) but I think that this time I will, if only to you guys.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle of this issue. For instance, I do believe that fandom is a community, or perhaps better said, a collection of communities. I enjoy the friends and acquaintances I've met. I enjoy that I have a built-in audience for the stories that I want to write via various newsletters and fic comms. I like knowing that if I just randomly wanted something--someone to tell me a good place for Spike to eat in London, or a black and white icon of Michael Rosenbaum *cough cough totally a request*, or advice on which DC comic I should start with as a newbie--these are all things I could find from someone through fandom.

I don't think that there are overarching rules for how to behave in fandom, although I think "Treat people how you'd like to be treated" is a pretty good one. We are a collection of communities, each with different standards and expectations; each of us comes to fandom for different reasons and those reasons dictate how we participate.

I also believe very strongly in concrit. I want people to offer it to me and I enjoy beta-ing because it is a situation in which I can really delve into something someone is writing. It makes me sad that as mod of sga_talk, I can never offer up my own work for critique because boy do I think I could benefit from that. I think sga_talk is a very good example of my middle of the road stance on this issue; sga_talk is a comm devoted to concrit but as a concession to what I feel is the very important communal nature of fandom, author permission must be given for a piece of fanfic to be discussed.

I believe concrit is important, not only for the author of the piece, but for other authors. I learn more about how to make my writing effective by discussing yours. As I dissect what you have written, as I discover what you do that works and what you do that doesn't, my own writing improves.

However, concrit and reviews are two different things and I think they're being conflated in this latest kerfluffle. Reviews are also not feedback. Posting a negative review in your own journal and posting a negative feedback comment to a fic are two different things as well.

I think that it is an acceptable practice in fandom to write negative reviews. I don't think it's acceptable to conflate a person with her writing (It's not okay to trash Author A's character because you think her McShep is cheesy, for example) and I think there are ways of registering dissatisfaction with a piece without being overly rude, but a negative review does not have to do either of those things.

I personally do not give negative reviews. This is because my recs serve a very clear cut function for me. I do not rec anything that I don't want to read/see again. My recs are a way for me to keep track of material that I would like to look at again in the future. I am glad that other people benefit from them and use them, but on the whole, they are for me. Sometimes I will make a qualified rec (as in, I want to read this again, but I think X story element was not so hot), but I don't review stuff that I'm never going to look at again. The stories I enjoy for the moment but forget about the second they're done, the stories I start that I don't like at all--these never make it to my journal because I am never going to be set with the burning desire to read them again. Other people rec/review for other reasons, and the content of their reviews will reflect that.

If I read a negative review of my work (which I have before; in fact, someone has delicioused one of my fics and in the notes has commented that I really didn't do enough with the story, which is SO TRUE) it might make me angry or hurt my feelings or it might make me go, "Yeah. That sucked," or "Okay, *that's* how I fix that," depending on what was said and the tone of it. But I still think that person has the right to evaluate what I've put out for public consumption.

I feel like I had more to say but I can't remember what it is and I'm not sure this is all that coherent anyway, so um. The end.

ETA Also, to be clear, I am linking to Grace's post here, not because she is the instigator of wank but because she is on my flist and it is through her post that I originally found the matter. In retrospect, I should have also linked to lamardeuse's post.

ETA redux I'm going to unlock this post; I'm not certain why I locked it in the first place.

So, executrix posted the HANDOUT for the panel on the personal politics of slash that she and beanside moderated, and after I got over my, "OMG OMG OMG beanside! Who makes Jeffrey Dean Morgan do it with Chad Michael Murray! (It's the three names; they belong together)," I was all, "Oooooh, intriguing questions."

The one that caught my eye immediately was the following:

3. M/m slash and f/f slash: more similar than different, or more different than similar?

And BTW, I love how all of these questions are essentially unanswerable except in a very personal, subjective way.

So here's my personal and very subjective answer.

More different than similar. For me.

( Nekkid girls under the cut! )

Expect spammation this weekend. I am all by my lonesome and also ill and unlikely to go anywhere. Consider yourselves thusly warned. :)

So, I've been thinking about something for a little while now and then thelastgoodname and I emailed about it and I decided to make a post because I find myself intensely curious about the way the rest of you approach this issue.

Until very recently, the fanfic I wrote fell into one of two categories. I either wrote stories that I thought other people would like to read (stories that the current trajectory of fandom is loving) or stories for which I received some bolt of lightning kind of inspiration (and these usually tend towards backstory or bits that canon has elided). By and large, the kinds of stories I usually write are not the kinds of stories I most like to read. In fact, I would often find myself thinking, "I'd really love to read X story. Why has no one written it?" while doing nothing about it.

It suddenly occurred to me that *I* could write the stories I wanted to read. Um, yes. Duh. Really, really duh. But for me not so much. It's taken me a while to get into the headspace where I can enjoy something I've written as much as something someone else has written, and even then I don't enjoy it in the same way. I still would prefer that someone else write that kickass Sheppard/Caldwell sex-slave AU because if I wrote it there would be no mystery for me there, no hanging on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen. There would be pleasure in the words and in the craft of it and in the figuring out the bones of the story, but it's not the same kind of pleasure as coming to a piece entirely from the outside (or as outside as you can be given the way that fandom has a tendecy to make us all rub off on influence each other LOL). Also for me is the issue that many of the stories I really, really want to read hit kinks (either sexual or narrative) that somehow feel strangely personal to write stories about. For example, I have no qualms telling you guys that I enjoy rape fic, but it somehow makes me feel vulnerable to contemplate writing it myself.

Even so, I've found myself writing fic in the past couple months that I wanted as a reader rather than a writer. So what about y'all? Thoughts? Examples?

I've been wondering for some time now how those of you who co-author fics negotiate doing so. It seems to me that writing with another person is potentially an incredibly rewarding experience but also one that can be fraught with tension. The only time I attempted to co-write a fic was roughly two years ago, and while the experience was very positive and a lot of fun, the fic was ultimately abandoned when we both had different visions for the project.

In the interest of full disclosure, my musing is prompted by an unfinished fic currently sitting on my hard drive. I'd love for someone to write it with me, but I'm unsure how the actual writing would proceed. Does one person do most of the actual writing, while the second person contributes heavily in the outlining, plotting, and revision/expansion stages (which seems the most workable model to me)? Do both people write equally, maybe taking turns every page or so (which seems much more difficult to me as even two very good writers will differ in terms of style)?

If you have written with another person and feel that the experience was a positive one, please share with me your tips on co-writing. And I'm maybe kinda putting out feelers to the hard-core flisters here about collaborating with me on something. Maybe. LOL

So, is there a huge disconnect between the kinds of stories you fantasize for your favorite characters and the kinds of stories you actually write for them? Because the answer for me is YES! Even if I have fantasized a story in excrutiating detail (which is how I fantasize--excrutiatingly. My fantasies come equipped with bathroom breaks for all and long expositiony bits that explain what everyone had for dinner and just how long that drive from Cheyenne Mt. to the HoJo is), I most likely will not write that story down for public consumption. I tend to actually write stories that interest me on an intellectual level rather than a sexual one. I want to *read* stories that are like the ones I fantasize, but I don't often write them.

Here's an example.

( In which Lorraine wears her shamed, yet turned on face )

I would read the hell out of this story and feedback it and rec it on my journal and love it and name it George. But I have no compulsion to write it. I think that's because the act of writing de-eroticizes the scenario for me. It turns it from this situation that I think is hot into SOMETHING I AM TRYING TO GET RIGHT. You know what I mean? I want the characterization to be spot on and the dialogue to ring true and the language to be interesting and vital in the pieces I write. Translating something that turns me on into a product that I want to share with you guys takes me out of my comfort zone in terms of writing.

What about y'all? Am I alone in this?

ETA: I almost never get turned on or scared or saddened by the things I write. It's almost as if they don't affect me on an emotional level at all. (The only exception being "Thanatopsis" for which I bawled during the entire four hour period of time it took me to write it). I get the feeling this makes me a weirdo.

Also, where is all the Sheppard/Caldwell? *whines*

I've been thinking about fic inspiration since I began the Great Prompting of Aught Six. Only one person that I know of took me up on the first prompt (*waves at Trekgirl*) and at least one person expressed confusion as to how answering the prompt would even work.

This led me to wonder what makes a good fic prompt? My initial prompt (Choose a character you don't like in one of your fandoms and write a fic (drabble, ficlet, epic length novel) exploring why you don't like that character--just what it is about that character that squicks you, gets on your nerves, pisses you off, or makes you uncomfortable. I don't mean a character bashing fic; I mean one in which you really thoughtfully examine the elements of the character you don't like.) could be answered in any fandom with any pairing.

So....do prompts have to be fandom-specific, or even character-specific to really function well as prompts? Do you think the nonfandom/nonpairing-specific prompt can work? Does a pairing plus an adjective, a color, and a noun work for you? Or do prompts in the form of song lyrics or lines of poetry inspire you? For you as a fic writer, what kinds of prompts really get you to writing?

Commenting with examples especially appreciated. :)

[And here, I'm not asking what inspires you in your every day life (like a song you hear on the metro), but what kinds of prompts that other people have given you that have yielded good results.]

When I reviewed The Democratic Genre a couple posts back, some of the comments turned to a discussion of fanfic vs. profic. executrix suggested I take that convo top-level, so here I am. Doing that. *g*

Anyway, I said that I think that fanfic and profic are equally challenging to read and write, and I don't privilege one over the other. I also said that fanfic and profic often have different aims and pull out different tools from the toolbox.

Now, I can't speak very much about the writing of profic, as I've never had anything published. However, I *read* a lot of profic, and some of my RL friends are writers and one of them in particular has been encouraging me to do some writing of original pieces (*nudge nudge* krayat). So, from my position of dubious experience, here's a handful of comments about fanfic and profic.

I think that fanfic provides someone who's not interested in world building a way to write stories without having to worry about or spend time creating from whole cloth a universe for her characters to inhabit.

I think fanfic provides an excellent opportunity for creativity. Because the infrastructure already exists, doing something truly novel and shocking and intriguing takes a heck of a lot of work. Taking those bones and building something unexpected and different from the original model (or even just the original model from a different angle) on top of them makes for damn good reading. And because your readership is familiar with the original model, making it leaner or showing it only from the ass side immediately creates tension. Fanfic is, for me, all about subversion. Taking this thing that already exists and wringing the hell out of it--sometimes as Pugh says to make more of it and sometime to get more from it.

I know with this original fiction story I'm making pages of notes on and creating outlines and Venn diagrams for writing, I couldn't decide what to write about at first. And then I thought, "Wait! I'm an interesting person. All kinds of traumatic interesting things have happened to me. I'll just fanfic my life." And what I meant by that was, okay, I can take the bare bones of an event from my life and then fictionalize around that foundation. And I know it sounds like I'm calling fanfic a crutch here, but I'm really not. I *am* saying that reading/writing fanfic creates a different way of approaching reading/writing profic, at least for me.

Most profic I think also necessarily has to contain more descriptive passages than fanfic. For instance, most fanfic doesn't spend a lot of time describing characters physically because we all know what the characters look like. Same with, oh, the library in Sunndale or the lobby of the Hyperion. (0f course, always exceptions to the rule)

What do you guys think?