Pros-y Love and Think-y Things...

[byslantedlight]

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...

Comments

[byslantedlight]

So it sounds like you're defining "crackfic" as comedy-where-the-humour-comes-from-the-absurdity-of-the-situation? Rather than an-absurd-fic-that-might-have-comedy-in-it? In which case, presumably "crackfic" is author-defined, because they're almost certainly purposefully writing around those two things. Or do you think you can have crackfic by that definition where the focus is on the lads themselves?

So... might the Cupid fics and Greek God fics be "crackfic", as would the Corgi figurine fic, hmmn, A Weekend By the Lake perhaps? They're all absurd situations and humorous - I wonder if they're as author-driven as I've been thinking as well - I'll show you something whacky rather than wouldn't it be fun if B/D were... D'you know, I don't think they are, I think they're more the latter... there's something about the focus. And maybe it's as much the labelling thing as anything else again - if someone's defined something then it's as if they're telling me to read it in a certain way, and once that's in my head then it's stuck there... So because the older fic isn't labelled, it's perhaps more likely to read to me as character-driven... Hard to tell now, cos if I go out looking for newer Pros "crackfic" it'll all be defined as such and then I'm stuck... *g*

[lukadreaming]

A Weekend By the Lake would definitely be crackfic!

Re. your first paragraph, I suppose it could be both. I think crackfic has to have humour *and* absurdity in some measure.

And maybe the author does have to define it -- otherwise, do we call it badfic? *g*. Although it might still be badfic, even if the author has claimed it's crackfic *bg*.

[byslantedlight]

Hmmn - I think I really replied to this when I replied to you down below, so I won't repeat it, but... yeah... *g* More detail down there! *points*

*g*

[msmoat]

Wait, wait, wait, you'd define "A Weekend by the Lake" as crackfic? Huh. Now I'm all confused.... I don't know about all these newfangled labels and such!

So, does it lend me any cachet that I've apparently written crackfic? Or does that only apply to modern fans who know what they're doing?*g*

[lukadreaming]

Hee! It makes you an incredibly cool person!

[byslantedlight]

Heee - that's what I'm trying to work out! *g* What is "crackfic", anyway?!

So... there's cachet of some sort to writing crackfic? Who from? Why? Tell me more! *g*

Aaaand (ooh, you're going to regret dropping in *g*) - so one of the things we were wondering is whether there has to be some level of involvement in the concept of the fic in order for it to be "crackfic" - that the point of the fic is more the author writing something absurd and humourous thant he author writing about B/D. The latter wouldn't have come about if it hadn't been for the former concept first, if you like. So when you wrote AWbtL, do you remember the whys of it? Why did you decide to write it?

[msmoat]

Why did I decide to write it? Because Pros permeated every bit of my life at the time. *g* No, seriously, there isn't an either/or here. Yes, I wanted to write something absurd and humourous; I wanted to give pleasure and a bit of a thrill to the people who'd been at the con and had such a marvellous time; I wanted to think "what if" about Bodie and Doyle sort of intersecting with our lives. But, in all honesty, the main point of it was, as always Bodie and Doyle. I would strongly object to the story being categorized as primarily being about absurdity/humour, and secondarily about B/D. It's a mixture! And I'd put B/D as prime in that mix.

Maybe, at least for me, that's when crackfic works or doesn't work. It works if the characters are of primary concern. If the "look how crazy I am with this idea!" is foremost--and the other not there at all--then it doesn't work. For me.

[byslantedlight]

Maybe, at least for me, that's when crackfic works or doesn't work. It works if the characters are of primary concern. If the "look how crazy I am with this idea!" is foremost--and the other not there at all--then it doesn't work. For me.
Yes! For me too, which is why I decided to ask how other people defined "crackfic", cos there seemed to be more to it than just "absurd situation + comedy"...

I've always read AWbyL just as you described it - primarily about Bodie and Doyle, and that's the feeling I get from your fic in general - but not from more recently, author-labelled "crackfic", so I'm thinking there's something that separates the two... possibly the "self-consciousness" that Luka mentioned...