It was good old American know-how, that's what.
The power of procrastination is awesome, my friends: I've finished two stories that have been sitting in my fic pile incomplete for months, merely to avoid working on my main summer_of_giles project. At least I'll have something to post. It is the month of genfic for me, it seems.
I am once again stopping myself from commenting on remix stories lest I accidentally reveal which one I wrote, though I keep starting to write feedback. Nobody has any guesses about the remix I wrote, which amuses me because I think it's a sore thumb. But then, we all know our own styles better than anybody else knows them. My remixee seems to have liked it, which is a huge relief and almost the only thing that matters. There's something more personal about Remix that makes pleasing one's recipient more urgent than usual. We're tinkering with each other's babies.
But that tinkering is the point! The joy of Remix! I am always more easily pleased myself than I fear my remixee victim will be, because of the pleasure of surprise in finding out what they made of the idea at the core of my story. They find something there I didn't find. They choose to examine an aspect I didn't even notice. They say, no, wait, what if that character does something else right there at the crucial moment?
Many worlds, many readings, the core pleasure of fanfictional explorations. It's there as I read other original/remix pairs as well as my own. It's why I love fanfic. Even when it's a godawful technical mess, there's something going on in it, the fizz of possibilities and alternative universes and worlds without shrimp. So cool!
Because I saw HP6 last week, Rowling is of course on my mind. Poor JKR and her attempts to shut down unanticipated readings of her characters. The Harry/Hermione ship, for instance, or Remus/Sirius. Or hey, Rowling's most famous blindness to her own subtext: the fascinating character that is Severus Snape. It seems so joyless to me to try to close everything off like that.
This is why my fic archive has a mellow usage policy on it as well as a Creative Commons license. Remix away! Tell me something I didn't know. Shock me by revealing my subtext. Tell me I got it all wrong and show me how it really went, and enjoy it when the next person along tells us both all about how it totally went this third way instead.
Yeah, I've kinda been in a progressively better mood every day recently. Brace yourselves for more good cheer.
ObFannishOpinion: I find the Eleventh Doctor's new look charming. Tweed and bracers, people, tweed and bracers. There are casting spoilers on the Sun's slideshow along with more photos of Eleven in tweed. I'm kinda stoked about all of it.
I am once again stopping myself from commenting on remix stories lest I accidentally reveal which one I wrote, though I keep starting to write feedback. Nobody has any guesses about the remix I wrote, which amuses me because I think it's a sore thumb. But then, we all know our own styles better than anybody else knows them. My remixee seems to have liked it, which is a huge relief and almost the only thing that matters. There's something more personal about Remix that makes pleasing one's recipient more urgent than usual. We're tinkering with each other's babies.
But that tinkering is the point! The joy of Remix! I am always more easily pleased myself than I fear my remixee victim will be, because of the pleasure of surprise in finding out what they made of the idea at the core of my story. They find something there I didn't find. They choose to examine an aspect I didn't even notice. They say, no, wait, what if that character does something else right there at the crucial moment?
Many worlds, many readings, the core pleasure of fanfictional explorations. It's there as I read other original/remix pairs as well as my own. It's why I love fanfic. Even when it's a godawful technical mess, there's something going on in it, the fizz of possibilities and alternative universes and worlds without shrimp. So cool!
Because I saw HP6 last week, Rowling is of course on my mind. Poor JKR and her attempts to shut down unanticipated readings of her characters. The Harry/Hermione ship, for instance, or Remus/Sirius. Or hey, Rowling's most famous blindness to her own subtext: the fascinating character that is Severus Snape. It seems so joyless to me to try to close everything off like that.
This is why my fic archive has a mellow usage policy on it as well as a Creative Commons license. Remix away! Tell me something I didn't know. Shock me by revealing my subtext. Tell me I got it all wrong and show me how it really went, and enjoy it when the next person along tells us both all about how it totally went this third way instead.
Yeah, I've kinda been in a progressively better mood every day recently. Brace yourselves for more good cheer.
ObFannishOpinion: I find the Eleventh Doctor's new look charming. Tweed and bracers, people, tweed and bracers. There are casting spoilers on the Sun's slideshow along with more photos of Eleven in tweed. I'm kinda stoked about all of it.