You are the *best* at getting right to the point of something important, you know?
so it's back to the old historical fiction challenge of writing in a way that sounds compatible with the setting, but is much closer to modern language than the real thing.
See, this is where I'd mention my dream of an Arthurian AU for due South. But it won't work, because a) no one would want to wade through the language and dialects (Ray Kowalski would *totally* use the language of the Pearl Poet, while Vecchio would speak Chaucerian Middle English, and Fraser would probably speak courtly French), and b) if I wrote it using modern language, I'd be annoyed and never finish it.
This is why I don't (or haven't yet) written historical AUs, and very rarely read them. Because even if you get the rest of the period details right, the language is off--incomprehensible to the fandom, or wrong for the period.
There's something to be said about knowing *just enough* about a time to make it interesting, but not so much that the AU becomes an exercise in scholarship, rather than fanfic.
And even with the closest sort of AU to canon (what llassah calls a Pivotal Event AU, and what I think of as an Alternate Reality, since that's a more common usage in sci-fi literature) you have to cope with questions of characterization that are more complicated than in a standard story. Without the canon boundaries, readers are more careful about what behaviors they accept.
For me, those are the difficult parts of writing an AU--language and characterization. People are willing to let some really crazy events slide, but not characterization. And I'm willing to fudge characterization if it fits with the AU, but I'm a stickler for getting the language right. I've done three now, in three fandoms, and had the same problems each time.
Huh. That was a bit of a ramble. But I saw your comment, and couldn't resist tacking my own two cents on. *g*
A due South arthurian AU- the thought fills me with utter and wonderful glee, but yes, trepidation. The dialects of something like thatwould be like stepping right into the middle of the academic war about translation, and what is allowable and what isn't (Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, for example) Historical AUs do present a challenge that the canon might...it might not be able to take it. It depends how much you think RayK's idiomatic way of speaking is integral to his character, or if it's more his way of thinking.
And alternate reality *facepalm* that's what I was trying to think of, but I think I'll leave it like that and plead ignorance. The laguage issue is one different writers have different standards on, but knowing how shirty I got over Shakespeare's treatment of the Welsh in Henry V (Fluellen, honestly, how many look yous do you want to use?) I completely sympathise.
The dialects of something like that would be like stepping right into the middle of the academic war about translation, and what is allowable and what isn't
It's really more of a pipe dream for that very reason--I would want to avoid the translation issues by, you know, not translating. Just writing it in the proper languages, and fixing the dialects that way.
(Beowulf is a whole *other* story. A story that I suspect I'll never write, even though the prompt is terribly tempting. And for the record, Heaney's Beowulf is no more problematic than any number of prose translations that *didn't* get slammed for playing fast and loose with the text. /rant)
And without translation an Arthurian AU would be pretty much unreadable, and an exercise in futility. As well as being bad fanfic.
For the record, I think Ray's way of speaking translates fairly well, if it's taken to be some grammatical quirks and a general sense of the vernacular. His way of thinking and his way of speaking are tied together more strongly than either of them is to his dialect, IMHO.
The language issue is one different writers have different standards on
It is, and I'm fully aware that my standards are both a) unreasonably obsessive, and b) subject to abandonment when I feel like it. But for dS at least, language is such a central part of the canon that it seems llike it should be important for thinking about the fic as well. Especially when it comes to AUs and ARs, because in those so much of the situation and plot is subject to change that language and characterization are often the only things left.
I love that you can see a three-paragraph ramble as "getting right to the point"! *wins*
See, this is where I'd mention my dream of an Arthurian AU for due South.
I screwed up the coding first time through and then LJ ate most of the comment, ?? sad. Well, all I was really saying was YES, perfect, write it please. Oh, and some stuff about how Fraser translates easily but it's harder to see how to translate Ray-type quirkiness (v. or k.) to some eras, but I don't entirely agree with that on second thought, but I'm not coming up with the right vocabulary to go on about it right now, so skipping that part.
no one would want to wade through the language and dialects (Ray Kowalski would *totally* use the language of the Pearl Poet, while Vecchio would speak Chaucerian Middle English, and Fraser would probably speak courtly French)
Awesome though that is (and hot, may I just say? hot), I don't think it's necessary to go that far. We watch movies and read books all the time that are set in periods where they wouldn't have spoken modern English, but it is possible to translate that experience in a way that works for the reader without going to a full-on Hercules-Xena-style deliberately anachronistic idiom.
There's something to be said about knowing *just enough* about a time to make it interesting, but not so much that the AU becomes an exercise in scholarship, rather than fanfic.
Absolutely. I mean, if someone's goal is to write realistic historical fiction, that's one thing. If the goal is to write fic -- uh, not to get into the whole thing of "why we read fic" or anything -- the point is what you're doing with the characters, what access you're giving the reader, I guess, and the setting is more there to serve that.
And even with the closest sort of AU to canon (what llassah calls a Pivotal Event AU, and what I think of as an Alternate Reality, since that's a more common usage in sci-fi literature) you have to cope with questions of characterization that are more complicated than in a standard story.
Oh, I suppose you do, don't you? I think people tend to fall back on the natural momentum model -- you know, like in sci-fi, you've got the butterfly-effect model where a tiny change sends things wildly off course, but then you've got another model where going back in time and making small changes doesn't actually make much difference, because things tend to happen the same way anyway? I think in AUs, people tend to assume the characters would turn out basically the same, because their interest is more in seeing "how would the people I love act if they were put into a different setting, or given different relationships to each other?" than in "what people would these characters change into if put in a different setting?"
Well, unless you take the "all slash is AU" view, in which case you could argue that a lot of it comes from a desire to see what the characters would be like if they found true love or got really, really laid.
Aaaaaaaanyway.
I've done three now, in three fandoms, and had the same problems each time.
but it is possible to translate that experience in a way that works for the reader without going to a full-on Hercules-Xena-style deliberately anachronistic idiom.
Oh, absolutely. But this is where it gets sticky for me, because I'd be okay with ignoring the language for other periods. But this particular one, because I spent so much time studying it as an undergrad and later on, would be hard for me to handwave.
I don't usually watch film or television adaptations of the medieval period, either. They fall into the category of 'things which make me throw things at the screen.'
in AUs, people tend to assume the characters would turn out basically the same
I'm never sure where I fall on the 'same characters, new setting' continuum. In "Masquerade," we deliberately altered Ray's character, because his situation was *so* different that having him act the same seemed false. And we got some flak for it, which was maybe deserved but that I tend to see as a difference of opinion about just what elements of that character are necessary and sufficient.
In the Tiffany's AU, I'm finding it harder to push the characters out of the expected, even though there's just as much reason for it. I don't know if that's a function of it being Fraser's POV (he's much less flexible than Ray) or if it's because I can pull more of the backstory from canon in without breaking the AU.
Which fandoms plz?
There's "Masquerade" and the Tiffany's AU in dS, and an AR that I wrote in La Femme Nikita which is really quite terrible, and a Doctor Who AU in which I am very meta and annoying.
So I guess I should say that I've done 3 1/4 AUs, and maybe 1 1/2 of them worked.
But this is where it gets sticky for me, because I'd be okay with ignoring the language for other periods. But this particular one, because I spent so much time studying it as an undergrad and later on, would be hard for me to handwave.
I don't usually watch film or television adaptations of the medieval period, either. They fall into the category of 'things which make me throw things at the screen.'
Aaaaaah. It's your period. I see.
In "Masquerade," we deliberately altered Ray's character, because his situation was *so* different that having him act the same seemed false. And we got some flak for it, which was maybe deserved but that I tend to see as a difference of opinion about just what elements of that character are necessary and sufficient.
You know, now that I've talked about this with people a bit more, I think for me it's not so much a question of how much you can change a character and still have it be be that character, as it is a question of how much you can change a character and still have me be interested in or emotionally invested in what happens to them. Even if changes make perfect sense, I still might not want to read about the new version, if it didn't give me feelings I could relate back to the character who made me want to read fic about him or her in the first place.
But I can see stretching that for something like Masquerade, something based on a movie or a book you like, where you've got a separate interest in the setting you're transposing them to, in and of itself. That makes sense.
I think for me it's not so much a question of how much you can change a character and still have it be be that character, as it is a question of how much you can change a character and still have me be interested in or emotionally invested in what happens to them.
For me, these are different sides of the same question. It's about figuring out what parts of the original character are the ones that make us care about them, because those are also the things that make the character distinctive and real. This isn't always the most endearing part of the character, or the most obvious. But it's the bit that you have to keep to a) stay in the same fandom, and b) make people want to read the resulting AU to find out what happens with that character.
With Masquerade, we had quite a bit of discussion about how much of the problem was coming from the need to keep Ray true to character, and how much was coming from my (possibly unreasonable) attachment to the language of Charade, which is only partially mapable onto the dS characters. We ended up with a bit of an uneasy compromise.
Fraser is sort of consistently formal, with a set of quirks that are easy to shift around. But the physicality of the Rays, combined with the way that they're very much a part of the society in which they function, means that pushing them into a vastly different period runs the risk of breaking the continuity of the character.
so it's back to the old historical fiction challenge of writing in a way that sounds compatible with the setting, but is much closer to modern language than the real thing.
See, this is where I'd mention my dream of an Arthurian AU for due South. But it won't work, because a) no one would want to wade through the language and dialects (Ray Kowalski would *totally* use the language of the Pearl Poet, while Vecchio would speak Chaucerian Middle English, and Fraser would probably speak courtly French), and b) if I wrote it using modern language, I'd be annoyed and never finish it.
This is why I don't (or haven't yet) written historical AUs, and very rarely read them. Because even if you get the rest of the period details right, the language is off--incomprehensible to the fandom, or wrong for the period.
There's something to be said about knowing *just enough* about a time to make it interesting, but not so much that the AU becomes an exercise in scholarship, rather than fanfic.
And even with the closest sort of AU to canon (what llassah calls a Pivotal Event AU, and what I think of as an Alternate Reality, since that's a more common usage in sci-fi literature) you have to cope with questions of characterization that are more complicated than in a standard story. Without the canon boundaries, readers are more careful about what behaviors they accept.
For me, those are the difficult parts of writing an AU--language and characterization. People are willing to let some really crazy events slide, but not characterization. And I'm willing to fudge characterization if it fits with the AU, but I'm a stickler for getting the language right. I've done three now, in three fandoms, and had the same problems each time.
Huh. That was a bit of a ramble. But I saw your comment, and couldn't resist tacking my own two cents on. *g*
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And alternate reality *facepalm* that's what I was trying to think of, but I think I'll leave it like that and plead ignorance. The laguage issue is one different writers have different standards on, but knowing how shirty I got over Shakespeare's treatment of the Welsh in Henry V (Fluellen, honestly, how many look yous do you want to use?) I completely sympathise.
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It's really more of a pipe dream for that very reason--I would want to avoid the translation issues by, you know, not translating. Just writing it in the proper languages, and fixing the dialects that way.
(Beowulf is a whole *other* story. A story that I suspect I'll never write, even though the prompt is terribly tempting. And for the record, Heaney's Beowulf is no more problematic than any number of prose translations that *didn't* get slammed for playing fast and loose with the text. /rant)
And without translation an Arthurian AU would be pretty much unreadable, and an exercise in futility. As well as being bad fanfic.
For the record, I think Ray's way of speaking translates fairly well, if it's taken to be some grammatical quirks and a general sense of the vernacular. His way of thinking and his way of speaking are tied together more strongly than either of them is to his dialect, IMHO.
The language issue is one different writers have different standards on
It is, and I'm fully aware that my standards are both a) unreasonably obsessive, and b) subject to abandonment when I feel like it. But for dS at least, language is such a central part of the canon that it seems llike it should be important for thinking about the fic as well. Especially when it comes to AUs and ARs, because in those so much of the situation and plot is subject to change that language and characterization are often the only things left.
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See, this is where I'd mention my dream of an Arthurian AU for due South.
I screwed up the coding first time through and then LJ ate most of the comment, ?? sad. Well, all I was really saying was YES, perfect, write it please. Oh, and some stuff about how Fraser translates easily but it's harder to see how to translate Ray-type quirkiness (v. or k.) to some eras, but I don't entirely agree with that on second thought, but I'm not coming up with the right vocabulary to go on about it right now, so skipping that part.
no one would want to wade through the language and dialects (Ray Kowalski would *totally* use the language of the Pearl Poet, while Vecchio would speak Chaucerian Middle English, and Fraser would probably speak courtly French)
Awesome though that is (and hot, may I just say? hot), I don't think it's necessary to go that far. We watch movies and read books all the time that are set in periods where they wouldn't have spoken modern English, but it is possible to translate that experience in a way that works for the reader without going to a full-on Hercules-Xena-style deliberately anachronistic idiom.
There's something to be said about knowing *just enough* about a time to make it interesting, but not so much that the AU becomes an exercise in scholarship, rather than fanfic.
Absolutely. I mean, if someone's goal is to write realistic historical fiction, that's one thing. If the goal is to write fic -- uh, not to get into the whole thing of "why we read fic" or anything -- the point is what you're doing with the characters, what access you're giving the reader, I guess, and the setting is more there to serve that.
And even with the closest sort of AU to canon (what llassah calls a Pivotal Event AU, and what I think of as an Alternate Reality, since that's a more common usage in sci-fi literature) you have to cope with questions of characterization that are more complicated than in a standard story.
Oh, I suppose you do, don't you? I think people tend to fall back on the natural momentum model -- you know, like in sci-fi, you've got the butterfly-effect model where a tiny change sends things wildly off course, but then you've got another model where going back in time and making small changes doesn't actually make much difference, because things tend to happen the same way anyway? I think in AUs, people tend to assume the characters would turn out basically the same, because their interest is more in seeing "how would the people I love act if they were put into a different setting, or given different relationships to each other?" than in "what people would these characters change into if put in a different setting?"
Well, unless you take the "all slash is AU" view, in which case you could argue that a lot of it comes from a desire to see what the characters would be like if they found true love or got really, really laid.
Aaaaaaaanyway.
I've done three now, in three fandoms, and had the same problems each time.
Which fandoms plz?
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Oh, absolutely. But this is where it gets sticky for me, because I'd be okay with ignoring the language for other periods. But this particular one, because I spent so much time studying it as an undergrad and later on, would be hard for me to handwave.
I don't usually watch film or television adaptations of the medieval period, either. They fall into the category of 'things which make me throw things at the screen.'
in AUs, people tend to assume the characters would turn out basically the same
I'm never sure where I fall on the 'same characters, new setting' continuum. In "Masquerade," we deliberately altered Ray's character, because his situation was *so* different that having him act the same seemed false. And we got some flak for it, which was maybe deserved but that I tend to see as a difference of opinion about just what elements of that character are necessary and sufficient.
In the Tiffany's AU, I'm finding it harder to push the characters out of the expected, even though there's just as much reason for it. I don't know if that's a function of it being Fraser's POV (he's much less flexible than Ray) or if it's because I can pull more of the backstory from canon in without breaking the AU.
Which fandoms plz?
There's "Masquerade" and the Tiffany's AU in dS, and an AR that I wrote in La Femme Nikita which is really quite terrible, and a Doctor Who AU in which I am very meta and annoying.
So I guess I should say that I've done 3 1/4 AUs, and maybe 1 1/2 of them worked.
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I don't usually watch film or television adaptations of the medieval period, either. They fall into the category of 'things which make me throw things at the screen.'
Aaaaaah. It's your period. I see.
In "Masquerade," we deliberately altered Ray's character, because his situation was *so* different that having him act the same seemed false. And we got some flak for it, which was maybe deserved but that I tend to see as a difference of opinion about just what elements of that character are necessary and sufficient.
You know, now that I've talked about this with people a bit more, I think for me it's not so much a question of how much you can change a character and still have it be be that character, as it is a question of how much you can change a character and still have me be interested in or emotionally invested in what happens to them. Even if changes make perfect sense, I still might not want to read about the new version, if it didn't give me feelings I could relate back to the character who made me want to read fic about him or her in the first place.
But I can see stretching that for something like Masquerade, something based on a movie or a book you like, where you've got a separate interest in the setting you're transposing them to, in and of itself. That makes sense.
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Well, one of them, yes. The one I started with.
I think for me it's not so much a question of how much you can change a character and still have it be be that character, as it is a question of how much you can change a character and still have me be interested in or emotionally invested in what happens to them.
For me, these are different sides of the same question. It's about figuring out what parts of the original character are the ones that make us care about them, because those are also the things that make the character distinctive and real. This isn't always the most endearing part of the character, or the most obvious. But it's the bit that you have to keep to a) stay in the same fandom, and b) make people want to read the resulting AU to find out what happens with that character.
With Masquerade, we had quite a bit of discussion about how much of the problem was coming from the need to keep Ray true to character, and how much was coming from my (possibly unreasonable) attachment to the language of Charade, which is only partially mapable onto the dS characters. We ended up with a bit of an uneasy compromise.
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Not in terms of language and dialect, but in terms of informality of presentation. gar.. See, I'm missing the words here. Right, skipping.
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Fraser is sort of consistently formal, with a set of quirks that are easy to shift around. But the physicality of the Rays, combined with the way that they're very much a part of the society in which they function, means that pushing them into a vastly different period runs the risk of breaking the continuity of the character.
Which may or may not make sense.
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