Pros-y Love and Think-y Things...
The best thing about doing something as intensely think-y as my current second-job is that I seem to have woken up wanting to read and think about nothing but Pros and our lads today, and I've not felt like that for aaaages, so yeay! And yeay for a day job where I can... *g* So just to get us started...
They're a bit good, aren't they? *g* They just fit together!
So... think-y things! I recced a story over at ci5hq last week, From Here to Eternity by Ginny and Hestia (from Gryphon Press, which links at palelyloitering I've just realised are down, looks like the pages have been moved... and Doghouse too - gargh, must fix that when I get home!) and I ended up chatting a bit with sc_fossil about comedy and "crack", and it got me... thinking. *g*
To be honest I've never been convinced that "crackfic" is a whole special genre of it's own, or even really a sub-genre of comedy so much as just another name for it, depending on your sense of humour, but I've started to wonder if it's more to do with the perspective from which... hmmn... from which it's originally written rather than the subject matter of the story itself. You might need to bear with me on this one, but I'm kind of curious about how other people view crackfic...
So, when I first found Prosfic, I found stories about the lads as elves and as cats and as Corgi figurines and Murphy as a koala, and Doyle as a merman... oh, and Bodie as a unicorn, and that one about the werebudgie and... well, and like any other story, that was just what they were. They were stories about the lads, where the author was trying to tell us something about the world and the characters by using those settings. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes they were touching and sometimes they were just too bizarre to bother reading. But they were just stories.
Eventually I started seeing variations on the word/s crackfic, sometimes with an exclamation mark in the middle, sometimes not, and when people described it, they tended to be stories such as the ones up above - stories set in such bizarre situations that the author must have been on crack while writing them. Okay... Except eventually I started hearing people say things like "There's no crack in Pros!" and "If I write Pros I'd write crack!fic and Pros is so serious" and I sort of looked at all the stories above and all the dozens of others along the same lines, and thought of those ones where the Greek Gods are involved, and Cupid, and the National Elf Service (*g*) and presumed the the people saying "There's no crack in Pros!" just hadn't actually read them - or perhaps even alot of Prosfic at all, cos how can you miss it?
So I've always been a bit bewildered by the idea of "crackfic", especially in Pros, cos it seems to me that it's always been there, but these people continue to claim that it's not...
So then talking to Sc_Fossil yesterday, she defined it (hope you don't mind me quoting here - I wouldn't if I thought you might, but if I'm wrong do smack me!):
"Crack these days is something utterly ridiculous, even more so than comedy. Fly on the Wall is comedy to me. Crack is bordering on almost so utterly inconceivable that the story is hilarious. Like this S&H story about Starsky actually shagging his car. That's crack to me. Going out and falling on a pie, where he rips his trousers and his dick falls out in front of some old lady is comedy."
And my response was:
"I do get that crack is supposed to be something ridiculous, but that's just it - to me something's either funny or it's not, and it's got nothing to do with how exaggerated and weird it is. To me it's not the situation that's the funny thing, it's more how the people in that situation react to it...
To me Fly on the Wall is comedy, not because it's a believable situation (that Doyle might be undercover as a rent boy and the other agents joking about it and trying to set him up) but because of the way they're shown to do that, and how Doyle himself reacts to them - and then at the end how he turns it all upside down on Bodie. (So to speak *g*)
A story about Starsky shagging a car? That premise [on its own] doesn't suggest at all to me that the story's going to be funny. It might be funny, depending on how it's written, but...
I suppose that's why I'm not into all the fuss about "crack" and people being desperate to write it - I don't read a story for the situation, or the setting, I read it for the people in it and how they react to something.
So okay, From Here to Eternity is based on an unlikely supernatural premise (hmmn, thinking about it, that would presumably make all ghost-stories "crack" by this new-fangled definition... *g*) but that's just the beginning of it to me, and doesn't make any difference to whether I'll read it or not... Actually the opposite might be true, when a story calls itself "crack" and the author is talking about how whacky she is to have come up with the scenario then I'm probably going to assume that the story is more about the writer than the actual characters, and just not bother reading it...
In the case of FHtE the setting is fairly "ordinary" - there are dozens of such ghost stories in the world, so it's not someone being "whacky" it's someone using a particular scenario to tell me more about the characters - and that's the bit that I'm interested in. Ginny and Hestia told me that the lads were utterly devoted to each other, even when separated by death, and not only showed me that, but made me laugh at the same time... Perfect! *g*"
So I've ended up thinking that maybe the difference between "crackfic" and all the other bizarre-situation-fic that's always been written, is that "crackfic" is perhaps more about the author than it is about the characters. I don't get the impression that crackfic authors start out thinking what do I want to say about B/D?, I more get the impression that they're thinking what can I write B/D in that's weirder than anyone else has written? That will show people how whacky I am?. (Obviously I'm generalising/guessing there, so if you've self-defined as having written crackfic and didn't start out like that, I'd love to hear what you were thinking! *g*) Which might also explain why seeing a story defined as "crackfic" tends to put me off reading it - not cos I don't like comedy/AU, but because I don't expect it to be about B/D, the term makes me expect it to be about the author showing me how whacky she is, which isn't what I'm looking for in Pros/fanfic/stories...
Maybe. You know me, an eternal work-in-progress... *g*
So... I guess this is my question (*g*):
What do you think "crackfic" is?
Do you think "crackfic" is essentially different from other comedy fic (and why?!)? (And does it have to be comedy - can being "crack-inspired" result in a sad/serious/etc fic?)
Is "crackfic" new or is it just a new name for one of the myriad ways of writing about characters?
Does the idea that "crackfic" is more about the author than the characters make any sense to you (and why/not?)?
Okay, questionS. *g*
They're a bit good, aren't they? *g* They just fit together!
So... think-y things! I recced a story over at ci5hq last week, From Here to Eternity by Ginny and Hestia (from Gryphon Press, which links at palelyloitering I've just realised are down, looks like the pages have been moved... and Doghouse too - gargh, must fix that when I get home!) and I ended up chatting a bit with sc_fossil about comedy and "crack", and it got me... thinking. *g*
To be honest I've never been convinced that "crackfic" is a whole special genre of it's own, or even really a sub-genre of comedy so much as just another name for it, depending on your sense of humour, but I've started to wonder if it's more to do with the perspective from which... hmmn... from which it's originally written rather than the subject matter of the story itself. You might need to bear with me on this one, but I'm kind of curious about how other people view crackfic...
So, when I first found Prosfic, I found stories about the lads as elves and as cats and as Corgi figurines and Murphy as a koala, and Doyle as a merman... oh, and Bodie as a unicorn, and that one about the werebudgie and... well, and like any other story, that was just what they were. They were stories about the lads, where the author was trying to tell us something about the world and the characters by using those settings. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes they were touching and sometimes they were just too bizarre to bother reading. But they were just stories.
Eventually I started seeing variations on the word/s crackfic, sometimes with an exclamation mark in the middle, sometimes not, and when people described it, they tended to be stories such as the ones up above - stories set in such bizarre situations that the author must have been on crack while writing them. Okay... Except eventually I started hearing people say things like "There's no crack in Pros!" and "If I write Pros I'd write crack!fic and Pros is so serious" and I sort of looked at all the stories above and all the dozens of others along the same lines, and thought of those ones where the Greek Gods are involved, and Cupid, and the National Elf Service (*g*) and presumed the the people saying "There's no crack in Pros!" just hadn't actually read them - or perhaps even alot of Prosfic at all, cos how can you miss it?
So I've always been a bit bewildered by the idea of "crackfic", especially in Pros, cos it seems to me that it's always been there, but these people continue to claim that it's not...
So then talking to Sc_Fossil yesterday, she defined it (hope you don't mind me quoting here - I wouldn't if I thought you might, but if I'm wrong do smack me!):
"Crack these days is something utterly ridiculous, even more so than comedy. Fly on the Wall is comedy to me. Crack is bordering on almost so utterly inconceivable that the story is hilarious. Like this S&H story about Starsky actually shagging his car. That's crack to me. Going out and falling on a pie, where he rips his trousers and his dick falls out in front of some old lady is comedy."
And my response was:
"I do get that crack is supposed to be something ridiculous, but that's just it - to me something's either funny or it's not, and it's got nothing to do with how exaggerated and weird it is. To me it's not the situation that's the funny thing, it's more how the people in that situation react to it...
To me Fly on the Wall is comedy, not because it's a believable situation (that Doyle might be undercover as a rent boy and the other agents joking about it and trying to set him up) but because of the way they're shown to do that, and how Doyle himself reacts to them - and then at the end how he turns it all upside down on Bodie. (So to speak *g*)
A story about Starsky shagging a car? That premise [on its own] doesn't suggest at all to me that the story's going to be funny. It might be funny, depending on how it's written, but...
I suppose that's why I'm not into all the fuss about "crack" and people being desperate to write it - I don't read a story for the situation, or the setting, I read it for the people in it and how they react to something.
So okay, From Here to Eternity is based on an unlikely supernatural premise (hmmn, thinking about it, that would presumably make all ghost-stories "crack" by this new-fangled definition... *g*) but that's just the beginning of it to me, and doesn't make any difference to whether I'll read it or not... Actually the opposite might be true, when a story calls itself "crack" and the author is talking about how whacky she is to have come up with the scenario then I'm probably going to assume that the story is more about the writer than the actual characters, and just not bother reading it...
In the case of FHtE the setting is fairly "ordinary" - there are dozens of such ghost stories in the world, so it's not someone being "whacky" it's someone using a particular scenario to tell me more about the characters - and that's the bit that I'm interested in. Ginny and Hestia told me that the lads were utterly devoted to each other, even when separated by death, and not only showed me that, but made me laugh at the same time... Perfect! *g*"
So I've ended up thinking that maybe the difference between "crackfic" and all the other bizarre-situation-fic that's always been written, is that "crackfic" is perhaps more about the author than it is about the characters. I don't get the impression that crackfic authors start out thinking what do I want to say about B/D?, I more get the impression that they're thinking what can I write B/D in that's weirder than anyone else has written? That will show people how whacky I am?. (Obviously I'm generalising/guessing there, so if you've self-defined as having written crackfic and didn't start out like that, I'd love to hear what you were thinking! *g*) Which might also explain why seeing a story defined as "crackfic" tends to put me off reading it - not cos I don't like comedy/AU, but because I don't expect it to be about B/D, the term makes me expect it to be about the author showing me how whacky she is, which isn't what I'm looking for in Pros/fanfic/stories...
Maybe. You know me, an eternal work-in-progress... *g*
So... I guess this is my question (*g*):
What do you think "crackfic" is?
Do you think "crackfic" is essentially different from other comedy fic (and why?!)? (And does it have to be comedy - can being "crack-inspired" result in a sad/serious/etc fic?)
Is "crackfic" new or is it just a new name for one of the myriad ways of writing about characters?
Does the idea that "crackfic" is more about the author than the characters make any sense to you (and why/not?)?
Okay, questionS. *g*