Halloween in Four Days!

[brigdh]

My roommate has gone home for the weekend. Double-you Tee Eff. Seriously people, what could possibly entice you to leave New York City on Halloween weekend? It is the best holiday of the year, as I have recently spent some time arguing with a girl from Iceland, where apparently it is not celebrated. (Which, by the way, is clearly blasphemy. Life without Halloween is just wrong.)

Anyway. I read a very interesting post on metafandom earlier today: Fandom and RP, from an Outsider by altoidsaddict.

Her basic argument is that the difference between fanfiction and original writing is that fanfiction necessarily entails communication within a community, and original writing, while the purpose is still communication, is far more unidirectional, from an author to the reader (but do go read the original post; maybe I'm misrepresenting her).

Which I thought was very interesting, because a lot of my stories were conceived as my contributions to the fanon conversation. When I get so sick of people writing Hisoka as the girly uke (or whatever my current hated trend is), I go and write a story with him on top. Looking over my stories, quite a few were written because it's politer than screaming, "Oh my GOD, fandom, stop writing that or I'ma cut a bitch!" Also, writing porn is generally more fun than getting into a wank.

It reminds me of a post I was thinking about writing a few weeks ago, about the differences between fanfictions that can be read without knowing the canon, and ones that can't. It was Swordspoint fandom that made me think of it, of course (what else do I think about?), because most of the existent stories are of the first type: they're relatively long, most over a thousand words, and tend towards either first-times or other similarly self-evident plots. Which is not to say they're bad, not at all! But they are stories that you probably can get a lot of enjoyment out of even if you have no idea who Richard and Alec are.

I do not write stories like that. My first Swordspoint story was only 300 words, and relied on and alluded to the canon so heavily that I imagine it would be incomprehensible to people who haven't read the book (and possibly people who have). Of course, then I threw off my theory, at least in regards to myself, by writing one of those long, canon-free stories, which is why I never got around to writing the post, but I still think it's an interesting division. I like stories, both to write and to read, that do require you to be obsessively immersed in the canon to untangle all of their metaphors, ones that depend on you understanding some tiny reference to make sense of the plot or characterization. I like the feeling of interplay with canon and fanon, with the community of people equally involved in the story, and with the story itself that those types of fanfic give me. I like stories that aren't just well-characterized or recognizable as being from a certain source, but that are heavily steeped in all possible details of the canon: tone of voice and mood and colors and sounds and everything else. (Occasionally there are fanfictions that manage to do so better than the canon itself. Not in Swordspoint, but when some mangakas seem to forget what happened to their characters earlier in the series, yeah). But that's me, and clearly many people prefer the other type.

Another reason why I was thinking about this topic recently is because nanowrimo is coming up. There is no possible way I'll have time to participate, but I was thinking about setting up a challenge for myself for the month of November, just to see if I could: write an original short story. And I have no problems thinking of characters, or world-building- any of the things, really, that fanfiction writing supposedly hampers- but I have no ideas for a plot. Because so many of my plots are just parts of a conversation; they're me saying "check out this interpretation!" or "you've all got it wrong, this is how he acts" or "don't you think they look good together?". And when I don't have my community to say things to, I have no idea what I do want to say.

So! What do you all think? Does that seem like a valid distinction between fanfiction and original writing to you? Which type of fanfiction do you like better? Am I still feverish and making things up that are totally illogical?

Comments

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I can assure you this supposed distinction between fanfic and original does not hold water in the sf/f field. In fact, one reason the community conversation could be so important in modern media fandom is because modern media fandom has many of its roots in the sf/f field, in which The Genre Conversation is such a big deal it actually gets capitalized.

Also, your point about the small points of canon and writing and reading immersed in canon dovetails nicely with a conversation parallactic and I were having about my own tastes in reading and writing fanfic. I'm very fond of playing with little details of canon, and my stories are often not newbie/non-fan friendly.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! See, now I'm wondering what creates this distinction between stories that are part of a conversation and ones that are more individual- if it just has to do with the history of one community verus another, or if it's a result of certain genres being more insular, or what. Of course, I don't know if there's really any use to making the distinction, but I think it's neat to poke at.

and my stories are often not newbie/non-fan friendly.

Oh, but I love them so. *grins*

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Really, my own conviction is that there are stories wherein the author is aware they're taking part in a conversation, and stories wherein the author is not. But there's an old axiom about books and vacuums and how the twain shall never meet, and I'm a firm believer in that axiom. There are also books that try too hard to prove they're not in a conversation with any other books. You can generally find them shelved in the Literature section. < / snark>

Hi, I'm a denizen of the sf/f ghetto, not that any of us think the Lit crowd talk out of their asses or anything. Worse, I'm one of those punks shootin' up verse in the specpoetry crackhouse and hooting at the idea that Shakespeare wasn't one of us. Pleased to meetcha. ;-)

I have to admit, I love my stories too. I'd write them otherwise if not.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I need to re-read the original post, which I looked at briefly yesterday while being swarmed over and chewed on by The Dog, a situation not conducive to close analytical reading. But I'm inclined to not only agree that the distinction doesn't hold water in genre, but to question it outside of genre. My initial thought is that there's often a difference in precisely what the conversation is focused on, and the time span over which it's taking place, but not in the essence of writing fiction as conversation itself.

A lot of fanfic is a conversation about the characters, and to a certain extent the characters are shared: everybody's starting with roughly the same information about them. But original fiction is still a conversation about things that the writer and her target audience have in common -- society, culture, shared concerns -- and in situations where there isn't enough commonality for the reader to read from that shared background, the work will be incomprehensible. (Or incomprehensible without considerable scholarly apparatus attached, or seemingly comprehensible but in fact subject to a reading that would make no sense at all to the original writer.) The subject of the conversation may range over a broader set of questions and concerns, but it's still a conversation: the reader does not simply passively receive the text.

Beyond that, and even leaving aside the question of the groups writers of original fiction often work with, it seems to me that when writing original fiction, you're still in conscious dialogue with your own literary tradition, whatever it may be. You're responding not just to the physical and social world around you, but to the books and stories everyone else has written. How can you write a social comedy about marriage without being in conversation with Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde? Or about war, without it being part of a conversation that includes Hemingway and Heller? I'm just not seeing the distinction.

I'm not even sure how far we can take the distinction between fan fiction that can be read in isolation from the source and fan fiction that's absolutely reliant upon knowing it well. The continuum is certainly there, but we see it in original fiction too. How is the 300-word story that makes no sense if you don't know canon well enough to understand all the references different in kind from the thousand-page Joyce novel that makes no sense if you don't know the Western canon well enough to understand all the references? Besides the fact that Joyce is official and respectable, so that somebody will go to the trouble of putting together all the footnotes for you?

But again, perhaps all this merely suggests that I should read the original post more carefully before going around and making sweeping pronouncements about it.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Now that I've read the original post, I don't think the poster is quite saying that original writing doesn't take place within a community context, but rather that the community is not as well-defined as within fandom. And that's a point I agree with, specifically because I'm both a genre reader and writer. The "canon" of sf/f is both hotly contested and wide-ranging, whereas the "canon" in fandom is the source(s). Works produced in both are in conversation with other works, and works produced in fandom are in conversation with the source, but works produced in sf/f are only in conversation with the "canon" insofar as the writer and readers are aware of the "canon," which...is not a problem that often crops up in fandom (and when it does, as in stories written by people who haven't seen any of a show or have only read the first chapter of a book, it's pretty universally agreed this is a bad thing).

Also, and I don't think this is a crowd who will get touchy about this, but fanfic tends to be one more step along the line than original fiction in terms of the conversation we're having. For instance, Minekura reads Journey to the West, watches Japanese theatre involving comedic figures wielding harisen, studies up on the Buddhist God/dess of Mercy (I'm speculating wildly on her sources here), and puts them all together to produce Saiyuki. I read Saiyuki, am familiar with JttW and the Buddhist God/dess of Mercy, not to mention a few other things that resonate with the source text of Saiyuki, and produce a work of fanfiction specifically using the characters and setting that Minekura created. I'm explicitly having my part of the conversation with her creation and with the people familiar with and invested in that creation.

Now, I could take Saiyuki and JttW and Japanese theatre and my knowledge of Buddhist mythology and create something that's not fanfic, that's my own take on all these things. I could also have never read Saiyuki and created something based on the same sources as Minekura. In the first instance, I'm having a conversation with Minekura's work on the same level as her own sources. In the second instance, I'm having an unconscious conversation with Minekura's work, because I'm unaware of it. My readers, however, might be, and might continue the chain of conversation.

The thing that arises in writing original fiction, though, that isn't generally a concern in fandom, is the question of reference and allusion (and I'm having a strong sense of deja vu about this conversation). When I write fanfic, I write in and to a limited community. I write with an expectation that readers will get certain things I put in, that reference the source in some way, and the nature of fanfic makes this expectation reasonable. When writing original fic, I write with the hope that readers will get certain things I put in, but as I'm casting my work out there into a much less self-selecting audience, there's no way to know for sure. That, I think, is the main difference the post is addressing.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to tell you there's no reason for that sense of deja vu. But I'm not going to stop chewing at this, either; like a wolf with an old bone, I have a sense that there's still good stuff in there that I haven't managed to get to yet.

As you know, I've speculated before that the ability to assume that readers will get your references might be one of the things that makes fan writing so particularly satisfying. But then, as I said below, my own speculations are based on less-than-firm facts, because in my own case, readers don't necessarily get my canon references. Some do, certainly, but a lot don't. And I'm not the only one who also throws in general references and allusions with considerable hope/expectation that readers will get them.

Which isn't to say there aren't real differences. Obviously there are. And what I'm straining at in this case may have more to do with the fact that I tend to think of fan fiction as a very broad category, logically sweeping in everything from West Side Story to the latest HP denial!fic to an 11-year-old's first soon-to-be-burned Mary Sue. If I take it more narrowly, as encompassing only those stories that are written as a part of an ongoing community conversation, a lot of my caveats vanish. Of course, that also makes for a certain circularity of definition, but I'm not sure how much that matters.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive you and I have had a discussion about allusions in fanfic before, but digging through our past discussions to find it, while a pleasant idea, has to take a backseat to a few projects I've got in the works at the moment. *G*

I think you're right about fanfiction being a very broad category, but I also think that the way the term was being used in the original post meant the poster was addressing a specific segment of it, the segment most non-fans think of when they say "fanfic," and that's the stuff produced in the self-identified fannish community, usually online these days, as part of our conversation with each other. And while I firmly believe fanfiction is wider than that (and in fact it's a lot of fun to see how people get confused when discussing the fannish sf/f community of the early twentieth century, because the fanboys and girls of the time were the sf/f "masters" of the mid-twentieth century, and it's harder to denigrate fanfiction when that's how most of your idols publicly got their start, but I digress), I can see why the original poster, when talking to fans about non-fan perceptions of fanfic and original fiction, would narrow down the definition. It's a question of audience. Just as I feel it's important to adopt the broadest possible definition of fanfic when discussing it with non-fans, in order to get them to understand that it's not this weird little hobby unrelated to any behavior they might engage in, I also think it's important to look at how most non-fans define fanfic when explaining why they'd think it's weird to fans. Especially since a lot of fans were non-fans at one point, and reminding them how they used to regard fannish activities is useful when your goal is dialogue between fans and non-fans.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

The thing that arises in writing original fiction, though, that isn't generally a concern in fandom, is the question of reference and allusion (and I'm having a strong sense of deja vu about this conversation).

There was a lot of discussion about allusion vs originality in the wake of the Cassandra Claire plagiarism scandal, though perhaps you're thinking of a different discussion. That was a bit of a different situation than what we're talking about, though.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if it came up because of the CC issue or not, but I do remember discussing non-source allusions and references in fanfic with Phoebe, and I think you as well. The idea of digging through all our various conversations is a bit daunting, though, especially since I have got a few things what need doing. *G*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You know, it's starting to ring a bell for me too. But I can't remember when it was, or in what context, and like you, I am definitely not about to try and search for it. Let's just assume that if we repeat ourselves, it was because it was such a good point we had to make it twice. *grins*

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a good plan to me. *G*

I was actually thinking today about how often fanfiction is seen as the successor to oral traditions, but I think fandom, especially online fandom as it exists in the era of personal blogs, strikes me as very like the eighteenth-century salons that both spawned a fair chunk of well-known contes des fees and fostered discussion about women's rights (aristocratic women's matrimonial rights, to be specific, but every little bit helps). Anyway, one aspect of those salons is that the stories written in that atmosphere tend to be in conversation with each other, and to reference each other (and earlier known tales and archetypes). My corner of the fantasy field, in particular, often refers back to this model in our discussions with each other, but I think it also applies very much to fandom.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I like that metaphor! (And randomly, have you seen Salon Fantastique- a book of short stories that came out about a month ago, by a lot of very good fantasy authors, with just that sort of idea in mind for genre writers?) I think it works very well for fandom, because we also have a lot of overlap between the purely creative aspects with personal, political or philosophical-type discussions.

Of course, this only increases my desire that I could gather up a crowd of fandom people and give them hot chocolate or something and have them sit around and talk about interesting things.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

And randomly, have you seen Salon Fantastique

Seen it, no. Heard of it, yes. A decent percentage of the other flist is in it. *G*

I believe that last desire is the impetus for cons. ;-)

[solo.livejournal.com]

I think it's quite natural that longer pieces of fanfiction are easier to understand for non-fans; the plot will usually provide enough of a context to be going on with. I still like even longer pieces to be so firmly grounded in canon, and referential of canon, that they'll add an additional layer of reading to a fan of the show (me me me me me it's all about meeee!)

And yes, shorter pieces can be much denser and more incomprehensible in that sense. And I adore those, where you can unpick every line, every word for its references; but I also like me some good juicy plot, so I really can't say where I'd come down in the end. Am I greedy for wanting both?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. Not greedy at all! And even I love a nice long story occasionally, I just find that my favorites and the ones that stick in my mind tend to be the short, dense ones.

But, hey, this is fandom! We provide for all tastes.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

I'm coming back to this. Because ever since I decided to write regularly for bb_shousetsu and started on draft number... three? of my novel (which is going the smoothest so far, so fingers crossed that this one won't die on me or dump a crapload of tangles and problems on my lap this time), I've started thinking about this. Someone suggested to me that if I was really taking my original writing seriously I'd stop writing fanfic, but I can't do that because bothing original fic and fanfic offer completely different reward systems for me, and I don't think that after experiencing both that I could give one up for the other. They're both writing, but different levels of it.

And shit, I've so much more to say on this, but I have to run and be somewhat productive today, so I'll be back. :)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. Well, I'd love to have you come back and say more about what you see as the differences! But I completely know what you mean about getting different things out of the two kinds of writing.

(Also, girl, don't forget that I totally want to see this novel!)

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

And off on a separate tangent, now you have me thinking about how much of a distinction there is between stories that require you to really know canon and stories that don't. There are drabbles that absolutely require that knowledge, that only make the word limit because they can depend on the reader knowing what isn't stated. Other than in those extreme cases, though, I think that while you may read a piece differently if you aren't steeped in canon than if you are, and sometimes will get less out of it as a result, it can be surprising how well things can work for a reader who has only a cursory knowledge of canon, or who knows it well but doesn't know the details the story relies on, or even who doesn't know it at all.

There's some evidence for this in the phenomenon of people joining a fandom because they've been seduced by the fic, without even knowing the original material. But I can also give you a couple of examples from my own experience. I can recall reading and loving a drabble that centered around Hijiri back in my earliest days with YnM. It struck me at the time in part because I didn't have that piece of canon yet: I had no clue who this Hijiri was, or why he had anything to do with violins. The piece worked for me anyway, and it worked in a kind of eerie doubled way after I caught up with the canon. But knowing the canon shifted it; I'd never have had my first set of reactions if I had known precisely what it was referencing.

And then there was the very kind reaction to that first non-drabble thing I posted, the one with Hisoka and the Williams poem. That story depended (or so I thought) on a handful of specific bits of canon, which I carefully referenced. Only what I didn't know at the time was that the anime canon, which I hadn't seen, diverged from manga canon on every single point I'd been relying on. I'd have guessed, if I'd known in advance, that the story would make no sense at all if you only knew the anime, but as it turned out, it seemed to work for at least some people who didn't know manga canon and didn't recognize any of my anchor points. Some people argued with me about the plausibility of my characterization, but even there it wasn't as though the story made no sense at all.

And as a final data point, a while ago a friend of mine who not only doesn't read fanfic but also doesn't know YnM asked whether she could look at what I'd been writing. I gave her the urls with some trepidation, assuming that nothing she found would make any sense. But rather to my surprise, she said later that it was perfectly accessible, like seeing little self-contained pieces of a novel. I doubt that my stuff is any more accessible than the average -- if I had to guess, I'd have assumed it probably less so -- so this suggests to me that a lot of what we're all doing could be read by non-fans with more comprehension than we might think.

But then, all of that is just random and anecdotal experience, and may not add up to anything much. Now I'm wondering, do you have examples of stories at both ends of the accessibility spectrum?

Also, finally, behold me not wondering aloud over Swordspoint first-time stories. I'm surprised there are any -- but no, I can restrain myself. See?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be a bit of a correlation with length; drabbles tend more toward the canon-dependent side, while I think most, if not all, epic-length stories can be read without previous knowledge of the canon. And I should have emphasized that I think it's more of a continuum than a binary.

I like your examples of Joyce novels and other works because you're completely right. And yet I still can't help but feel that fanfiction feels different, to me at least, than reading original novels. Maybe that's just me, or maybe it's a differing attitude toward fanfiction than toward "real" literature that makes me notice the community of fanfiction more. Or perhaps it's simply the ease of speaking with the fanfiction community- I can expect, if I post a story, some of the people I disagree or am responding to to read my story, and possibly even to comment. You are certainly capable of responding to Hemmingway, but you won't get to see his reaction. That ease and quickness of participating in the conversation might be what increases the feel of being in a community.

Now I'm wondering, do you have examples of stories at both ends of the accessibility spectrum?

I'd feel self-indulgent to talk about my own stories (and besides, the yuletide site is down so I can't link you to the story I'd have used as the counter-example), so I've adopted Rana as my Guinea pig, as hopefully she won't mind.

In His Element (http://ranalore.slashcity.net/ynmelement.html) is what I think of as a canon-dependent story. It would be very pretty to read outside of that context, as I think the poetry of the language stands for itself, but I don't know what sense it would have. It seems to me that you'd almost have to appreciate it on an abstract level. Perhaps I'm wrong, though.

Axiomatic (http://ranalore.slashcity.net/axiomatic.html), on the other hand, is perfectly comprehensible whether you know YnM or not.

You know, talking about this, I wonder if the distinction is not that one story can be read without knowing the canon and one can't, but rather that, with the second story, a YnM fan and someone who knows nothing about YnM will get much the same experience (or, you know, as similar an experience as two different readers can ever have). But in the first story, these two readers will come away with very different impressions. So it's not that you can't read some stories without knowing the fandom, it's that you won't getting out of it what a canon reader would. What you do get out of it might be equally worthwhile, but it's sure to be different.

Also, finally, behold me not wondering aloud over Swordspoint first-time stories. I'm surprised there are any

Any? There are tons! They dominate the fandom; it's why I've felt no need to write one myself. I don't want to add to the imbalance that already exists when there are so many other possible stories.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I've adopted Rana as my Guinea pig, as hopefully she won't mind.

Not only do I not mind, but I shall now preen over by my waterdish. La. *G*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee, I didn't think you would. And you have so many stories to choose from!

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Now this really is fascinating, because I'd almost flip these two. Axiomatic is accessible on a superficial level, in that you don't need to know who any of these people are to understand that you've got a workplace, that you have couples where each partner is taking care of the other in his or her distinct way, and that this is just as romantic as hearts and flowers. But it wouldn't have any resonance, I don't think, if you didn't know these specific people; the beauty of the piece is in the way each couple's ways of caring reflect what we know of the individuals and of the dynamics of their particular relationships, and of the circumstances of this particular workplace. And on the other side, I'd have said that In His Element is, while not as independent of canon as some things, probably capable of being read meaningfully without knowledge of canon. Yes, you'd miss a lot without any idea of who the hell these people are, or why Muraki goes with night and the moon and Tsuzuki with day and joy and sadness. But those are still very striking emotional portraits: I think even in total isolation you'd get the haunted chill and deadly laughter that goes with Muraki, and the love and sorrow that goes with Tsuzuki, and the sense of cleanness and judgment in the observer. I think that's a piece I'd have been struck by even if I'd encountered it before I knew the characters' names.

Having said all that, I'd like to be able to draw some conclusion from it. I'm not sure I can, though, except to repeat what we already knew, which is that I may not be the most normal of all possible readers. Which I can prove! Because:

Any? There are tons! They dominate the fandom

This still astonishes me. In fact, I had been going to speculate that perhaps one reason that it's such a small fandom was precisely that there's not a lot of scope for first-time stories in it, and in most fandoms first-time stories appear to be the dominant form. Clearly I was wrong, but I'm more surprised to be wrong here than in many situations. The thing is, I'd have thought the book itself, while it obviously doesn't foreclose first-time stories, makes it difficult for one to add anything. It isn't just that the characters are already together when the book opens; it's that the early relationship arc is also already there. What's left to do?

-- She said, once more demonstrating the amazing depth of her eccentricity. Obviously, there is something left to do. I just don't know what it is.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

because I'd almost flip these two

Wow, really? That's fascinating. And I can see the argument you make for reversing their places, even though I took care to choose two stories that I thought were extremely representative of their respective ends of the spectrum.

I don't know if I agree with you- for me at least, because I think I'd still read the stories the way I did rather than the way you did- but I see how you could come at them from your angle instead. This is so interesting! I have no idea what it means, or what we can say about the different types of fanfiction from it, but it's an amazing way of looking at ways of reading stories.

What's left to do?

Well, I can't really speak for a whole set of authors, none of whom I know, (but watch me proceed to do just that) but their stories seem to be very focused on the actual first meeting (and how it leads to sex, this being fanfiction and all), rather than any sort of relationship arc. Which I suppose is an interesting question- how would you end up having (inviting? allowing?) a stranger move in with you without knowing really anything about him at all?

On the other hand, I've seen people complain that there isn't a first-time scene in the books, either because they thought that that was necessary information, or because they simply weren't interested in a couple that was already together. So perhaps people are writing to fulfill that need.