[on comfort zones and breaking out of them]
I've been thinking a lot lately about what I'm comfortable with writing and what I'm not, and trying to figure out why. Coming into a fandom fairly late in the game, as I did with PoT, obviously put me at somewhat of a disadvantage, since by the time I got here, a lot of people had very specific ideas about how certain characters should be characterised. One of my favourite things to do is to expand minor characters, and fortunately PoT has a big enough complement of those that there are still several who have barely been explored at all, but there are some groups, most especially Rikkai and Hyoutei in my experience, that have pretty consistent characterisation across the board. (There are always exceptions, of course, and there are always fics that completely miss the trend, but you know.) It makes it difficult then for me to attempt characterisation based solely on canon, since there's a definite fanon for some characters, and going against that often just results in people going '...this girl doesn't understand [insert character name here] at all.' Now I realise I shouldn't care about that, but swimming hard upstream when you've only just been tossed into the river is kind of counterproductive. I'm of the firm belief that you should always learn the system before you try to change it, because then you can take it apart from the inside, but maybe that's just my scientific background talking.
In any case, comparing my experiences in PoT to my experiences in HP has been a really interesting exercise. I was rereading one of the RPs that marksykins and I did over at the_leaky, for nostalgia's sake, and I was amazed when I actually started blushing. At something I wrote. I think that's more telling than anything else could be. HP was such an enormous and well-established fandom that people had moved far beyond the simple fleshing out of characters. I remember when I first got involved in the fandom in 2003, before OotP came out, most of the fic I read (which was Harry/Draco) was all about snarky!leather-trousers!Draco being the Prince of Slytherin and artfully-messy!Harry being his Gryffindor saviour. Post-OotP, things got quite a bit darker, what with capslock!Harry and dead!Sirius and solid proof of Voldemort's influence now that he was back and all of that, and that began to manifest itself in a lot of darkfic. Not that there wasn't darkfic before, but what I read of it seemed pretty vanilla in comparison to the fic that came after OotP.
I guess, comparing HP to PoT in canon material, that makes sense, since PoT is a shounen manga that's pretty well light-hearted in a lot of ways, and HP is most decidedly not a children's series, however it's advertised. So the fic coming out of HP felt a lot more...adult, even though it was still about teenagers. Not only did HP have more adult themes on the whole, but it also had more adult content, which was why I was just as likely to come across a Remus/Sirius fluff!fic as I was to come across a hardcore BDSM torture Lucius/Harry. And after OotP, the darkfic became more seriously, heavily dark. There wasn't so much of the trend of Draco being abused by his father, or random and unsubstantiated rape and child molestation and so on and so forth, but when those subjects were touched on, they were touched on in a very disturbing way, disturbing because the writers were able to make it make sense.
It's possible it's just the circle I moved in that surrounded me with these dark-themed fics - I know a lot of you still on my flist from HPdom are much more inclined to write rape and child abuse and psychological mindfuckery and the inner workings of Death Eaters than you are to write fluff. For a long time there, I felt exactly the same way. I still do, actually - I feel more comfortable writing about psychology and dysfunctional relationships and torture and bloodplay and death than I do writing light-hearted fluff. But the problem with PoT is that unless you go AU, there's really not any room for that. The closest I can really see is a very mild sort of D/s relationship between Yukimura and Sanada, or the mind games that Yagyuu and Niou might play, or a couple of the authority figures smacking their team members around when they don't behave. (Violent as Kirihara is when he's in demon!mode, he's just a kid, and any fic where he's all cruel megaDom or something makes me kind of ill.) There's plenty of room for manipulation and practical jokes and typical teenage cruelty, but not much more than that. I think we can attribute this to the fact that the adults in PoT are not nearly as important as the adults in HP, so obviously the themes are going to be much less...well...adult.
In any case, the point of all this blather is that I was surprised by how much my mindset has changed upon shifting fandoms. Writing in PoT, I'm almost entirely disinclined to write penetrative sex, never mind anything non-vanilla, because I just can't justify it in my mind without my brain breaking completely. I really want to try writing some AUs this year, or branching off into other fandoms, that will let me pull in some of the darker things I'm used to, because writing vanilla all the time makes me feel...uncomfortable. It's not even that I'm dying to start writing rape or anything like that - rape, chan, and incest were always my hardcore squicks, even though I have made myself write all three before. Because really, that's just the way I am. I don't feel comfortable unless I am challenging my comfort zone, which sounds like a complete oxymoron, but really isn't. That's why I move all the time - as soon as I start to feel settled somewhere, I get antsy, because I feel like I'm going to let myself slip, and the next time life throws me a curveball, I won't be able to handle it. I need to constantly push myself in order to feel comfortable.
As a result, continuing to write pretty vanilla fic is making me twitchy. As much as I love writing Tezuka-and-Fuji-fall-in-love fic, or Shishido-finally-gets-a-clue fic, or anything like that, I never feel like I'm stretching myself enough. It's not just the porn either, though that's certainly part of it. The more I write a character, the more comfortable I feel with him, and the less inclined I become to write him as a result. And that's not what I want at all. I want to be able to sit down and write a Tezuka/Fuji fic without feeling like it's work to squeeze out every word. My Smutmas fic, as fun as it was eventually to write, was also torture in a lot of ways, because I've written so much Harry/Draco that it just wasn't a challenge in the way I would like. The request was basically 'write me exactly what you've written six hundred times before, thanks!' which was a challenge in and of itself, since I had to figure out a way to reinvent it in a post-DH world, but the dynamic was much the same, because I have one smoothed out in my mind and I don't know how to break out of it unless I come at the pairing from a totally different direction. (I'm thinking of something like Nothing Like Human, which, to this day, remains one of my favourite/best fics ever.) In fact, my Smutmas fic very nearly ended up as PG-13, because try as I might, they just didn't want to sleep together. I ended up having to force them into bed, and I'm sure it shows.
So what am I getting at? Well....two things, basically. First of all, I'm starting to feel very comfortable writing in PoT, and that's dangerous. I don't want to be comfortable. I want to feel like this is my fandom, sure, but I don't want to get into the habit of writing the same pairing dynamics over and over again, because then I won't want to write them anymore, and I'll miss out on my favourite pairings as a result. So I really want to start stretching myself, challenging myself to write things I never would have thought of before. 12 Days of Christmas was particularly helpful there, because it really made me push my boundaries, and quickly; I work best under pressure, where I don't have time to think too much and overanalyse, but just have to write and - in the words of Tim Gunn - make it work. That's also why I tend to sign up for fic exchanges especially, because then I'm writing to someone else's tastes instead of my own, and it really makes me stretch myself as a writer, as well as the way that I think about a character/pairing/whatever. I don't want to wait on exchanges to make me do that though - I have a few things in mind as ways to challenge myself that I'm sure I'll be posting about in the next couple days.
The second thing is that, as much as I love love love PoT, there are just some ways in which it's really limiting. There's not a tonne of room for dark, adult themes, unless you write futurefic after one or more of the characters has gone through some incredible trauma, or AU. There's really not room for pushing outside of the vanilla realms of porn without seeming remarkably OOC. So...I suppose that's an indication that I should really start either branching out into other fandoms or starting to build AUs, possibly both. I already have three AUs in mind that will allow me to be much more free with my use of less-than-conventional sex, which is beyond exciting, and I have people shoving other fandoms at me left and right that seem more...suited to the darker side of writing.
What does this all mean then for those of you who are still reading? Possibly nothing. I mostly just wrote this post for myself, to get it out of my head and down on paper, so to speak, because it's been gnawing at me for awhile now. I guess if anything, what it means is that you can look for a lot more diversity in my writing this year. I used to write a lot of experimental fic as well as darkfic - artsy, poetic prose that was more about imagery than plot, or metafic-type stories that existed more to expound on the technical workings of D/s or something to that effect, or mindfuck fics that were deliberately disturbing in an attempt to demonstrate the wrong of the situation (as a note, I don't believe in writing fic that's oh so wrong in order to be hot - that actually squicks me, to be honest), or darkfic that's meant to make the reader uncomfortable. Anything I write that falls within any of those categories is always clearly marked with warnings so you don't end up reading something that's going to squick the hell out of you. I'm also going to try to expand my character/pairing repertoire. This doesn't mean I won't be writing any more Tezuka/Fuji or Shishido/Ootori or anything like that - the nice thing about PoT is that I don't have OTPs, so I can write pretty much anything, but I do have favourites that I will keep coming back to time and again.
So....basically I guess this is just....a statement of intent. I seem to be doing a lot of those these days. x___x But I thought I'd share the motivation and the probable manifestation, in case you were curious. If not, well, then you can just look forward to a lot of fic. :D
In any case, comparing my experiences in PoT to my experiences in HP has been a really interesting exercise. I was rereading one of the RPs that marksykins and I did over at the_leaky, for nostalgia's sake, and I was amazed when I actually started blushing. At something I wrote. I think that's more telling than anything else could be. HP was such an enormous and well-established fandom that people had moved far beyond the simple fleshing out of characters. I remember when I first got involved in the fandom in 2003, before OotP came out, most of the fic I read (which was Harry/Draco) was all about snarky!leather-trousers!Draco being the Prince of Slytherin and artfully-messy!Harry being his Gryffindor saviour. Post-OotP, things got quite a bit darker, what with capslock!Harry and dead!Sirius and solid proof of Voldemort's influence now that he was back and all of that, and that began to manifest itself in a lot of darkfic. Not that there wasn't darkfic before, but what I read of it seemed pretty vanilla in comparison to the fic that came after OotP.
I guess, comparing HP to PoT in canon material, that makes sense, since PoT is a shounen manga that's pretty well light-hearted in a lot of ways, and HP is most decidedly not a children's series, however it's advertised. So the fic coming out of HP felt a lot more...adult, even though it was still about teenagers. Not only did HP have more adult themes on the whole, but it also had more adult content, which was why I was just as likely to come across a Remus/Sirius fluff!fic as I was to come across a hardcore BDSM torture Lucius/Harry. And after OotP, the darkfic became more seriously, heavily dark. There wasn't so much of the trend of Draco being abused by his father, or random and unsubstantiated rape and child molestation and so on and so forth, but when those subjects were touched on, they were touched on in a very disturbing way, disturbing because the writers were able to make it make sense.
It's possible it's just the circle I moved in that surrounded me with these dark-themed fics - I know a lot of you still on my flist from HPdom are much more inclined to write rape and child abuse and psychological mindfuckery and the inner workings of Death Eaters than you are to write fluff. For a long time there, I felt exactly the same way. I still do, actually - I feel more comfortable writing about psychology and dysfunctional relationships and torture and bloodplay and death than I do writing light-hearted fluff. But the problem with PoT is that unless you go AU, there's really not any room for that. The closest I can really see is a very mild sort of D/s relationship between Yukimura and Sanada, or the mind games that Yagyuu and Niou might play, or a couple of the authority figures smacking their team members around when they don't behave. (Violent as Kirihara is when he's in demon!mode, he's just a kid, and any fic where he's all cruel megaDom or something makes me kind of ill.) There's plenty of room for manipulation and practical jokes and typical teenage cruelty, but not much more than that. I think we can attribute this to the fact that the adults in PoT are not nearly as important as the adults in HP, so obviously the themes are going to be much less...well...adult.
In any case, the point of all this blather is that I was surprised by how much my mindset has changed upon shifting fandoms. Writing in PoT, I'm almost entirely disinclined to write penetrative sex, never mind anything non-vanilla, because I just can't justify it in my mind without my brain breaking completely. I really want to try writing some AUs this year, or branching off into other fandoms, that will let me pull in some of the darker things I'm used to, because writing vanilla all the time makes me feel...uncomfortable. It's not even that I'm dying to start writing rape or anything like that - rape, chan, and incest were always my hardcore squicks, even though I have made myself write all three before. Because really, that's just the way I am. I don't feel comfortable unless I am challenging my comfort zone, which sounds like a complete oxymoron, but really isn't. That's why I move all the time - as soon as I start to feel settled somewhere, I get antsy, because I feel like I'm going to let myself slip, and the next time life throws me a curveball, I won't be able to handle it. I need to constantly push myself in order to feel comfortable.
As a result, continuing to write pretty vanilla fic is making me twitchy. As much as I love writing Tezuka-and-Fuji-fall-in-love fic, or Shishido-finally-gets-a-clue fic, or anything like that, I never feel like I'm stretching myself enough. It's not just the porn either, though that's certainly part of it. The more I write a character, the more comfortable I feel with him, and the less inclined I become to write him as a result. And that's not what I want at all. I want to be able to sit down and write a Tezuka/Fuji fic without feeling like it's work to squeeze out every word. My Smutmas fic, as fun as it was eventually to write, was also torture in a lot of ways, because I've written so much Harry/Draco that it just wasn't a challenge in the way I would like. The request was basically 'write me exactly what you've written six hundred times before, thanks!' which was a challenge in and of itself, since I had to figure out a way to reinvent it in a post-DH world, but the dynamic was much the same, because I have one smoothed out in my mind and I don't know how to break out of it unless I come at the pairing from a totally different direction. (I'm thinking of something like Nothing Like Human, which, to this day, remains one of my favourite/best fics ever.) In fact, my Smutmas fic very nearly ended up as PG-13, because try as I might, they just didn't want to sleep together. I ended up having to force them into bed, and I'm sure it shows.
So what am I getting at? Well....two things, basically. First of all, I'm starting to feel very comfortable writing in PoT, and that's dangerous. I don't want to be comfortable. I want to feel like this is my fandom, sure, but I don't want to get into the habit of writing the same pairing dynamics over and over again, because then I won't want to write them anymore, and I'll miss out on my favourite pairings as a result. So I really want to start stretching myself, challenging myself to write things I never would have thought of before. 12 Days of Christmas was particularly helpful there, because it really made me push my boundaries, and quickly; I work best under pressure, where I don't have time to think too much and overanalyse, but just have to write and - in the words of Tim Gunn - make it work. That's also why I tend to sign up for fic exchanges especially, because then I'm writing to someone else's tastes instead of my own, and it really makes me stretch myself as a writer, as well as the way that I think about a character/pairing/whatever. I don't want to wait on exchanges to make me do that though - I have a few things in mind as ways to challenge myself that I'm sure I'll be posting about in the next couple days.
The second thing is that, as much as I love love love PoT, there are just some ways in which it's really limiting. There's not a tonne of room for dark, adult themes, unless you write futurefic after one or more of the characters has gone through some incredible trauma, or AU. There's really not room for pushing outside of the vanilla realms of porn without seeming remarkably OOC. So...I suppose that's an indication that I should really start either branching out into other fandoms or starting to build AUs, possibly both. I already have three AUs in mind that will allow me to be much more free with my use of less-than-conventional sex, which is beyond exciting, and I have people shoving other fandoms at me left and right that seem more...suited to the darker side of writing.
What does this all mean then for those of you who are still reading? Possibly nothing. I mostly just wrote this post for myself, to get it out of my head and down on paper, so to speak, because it's been gnawing at me for awhile now. I guess if anything, what it means is that you can look for a lot more diversity in my writing this year. I used to write a lot of experimental fic as well as darkfic - artsy, poetic prose that was more about imagery than plot, or metafic-type stories that existed more to expound on the technical workings of D/s or something to that effect, or mindfuck fics that were deliberately disturbing in an attempt to demonstrate the wrong of the situation (as a note, I don't believe in writing fic that's oh so wrong in order to be hot - that actually squicks me, to be honest), or darkfic that's meant to make the reader uncomfortable. Anything I write that falls within any of those categories is always clearly marked with warnings so you don't end up reading something that's going to squick the hell out of you. I'm also going to try to expand my character/pairing repertoire. This doesn't mean I won't be writing any more Tezuka/Fuji or Shishido/Ootori or anything like that - the nice thing about PoT is that I don't have OTPs, so I can write pretty much anything, but I do have favourites that I will keep coming back to time and again.
So....basically I guess this is just....a statement of intent. I seem to be doing a lot of those these days. x___x But I thought I'd share the motivation and the probable manifestation, in case you were curious. If not, well, then you can just look forward to a lot of fic. :D