It was a dark and stormy fic...
One of tehta's recent posts inspired me to think about various fandoms and why their fanfic does or does not appeal to me.
It all started with Harry Potter. I love the books; ever since I discovered them (shortly after the fourth book was published), I've devoured them from start at the stroke of midnight to finish some time the next afternoon. However, the fanfic doesn't appeal to me at all.
Same goes for Buffy: I loved the show (or at least the first four seasons), but I've read very little fanfic. I have read, and mostly enjoyed, the official novels based on the series, and there are certainly some talented writers whose fanfic is just as professional and well-written - but I haven't found them in the Buffy fandom.
I would have read Melrose fic, if people had been writing it back in the day. I would love to see good (non-Sue) fics based on The Outsiders. And I'd rather read Tolkien fanfic than a book (unless, of course, it's a book about Tolkien's world).
herein, I ponder on what I like and make use of bullet points.
So, tell me - what books/movies/shows/etc do you enjoy, but find the fic unappealing? Is it just that you can't find what you want to read? What turns you off about fanfic in those fandoms? And, conversely, what is it about the fandoms in which you do read/write fic that inspires you?
It all started with Harry Potter. I love the books; ever since I discovered them (shortly after the fourth book was published), I've devoured them from start at the stroke of midnight to finish some time the next afternoon. However, the fanfic doesn't appeal to me at all.
Same goes for Buffy: I loved the show (or at least the first four seasons), but I've read very little fanfic. I have read, and mostly enjoyed, the official novels based on the series, and there are certainly some talented writers whose fanfic is just as professional and well-written - but I haven't found them in the Buffy fandom.
I would have read Melrose fic, if people had been writing it back in the day. I would love to see good (non-Sue) fics based on The Outsiders. And I'd rather read Tolkien fanfic than a book (unless, of course, it's a book about Tolkien's world).
herein, I ponder on what I like and make use of bullet points.
- Is it slashable?
In the case of HP, I find no overt and very little covert slashiness. Even the adults in the book don't give us much to slash - they're rather asexual as a group. Imagining them in graphic situations is a bit like imagining your fifth-grade teacher or your parents in those situations. The books are, first and foremost, children's books. They have elements that obviously appeal to adults, but they are written at a level kids can understand, and are written about things that interest kids. Sex doesn't.
The same goes for Buffy, though for more personal reasons. I happen to like and believe in the heterosexual relationships on the show, and in order to slash someone who has a canon relationship with the opposite sex, you have to be able to see that relationship as flawed. Of course, I love the existing femslash pairing, too, and the few Buffy fics I've read have centred around Willow and Tara. I think some good fic could be written about Ethan and Giles back in their youth. But please don't slash Angel. I liked the Buffy/Spike pairing, because the chemistry was always there, but my first OTP was Angel/Buffy. I sobbed during 'The Prom'. I have an online shrine to this pairing.
Melrose just begged for some good Matt/Michael slash (in fact, the actors deliberately played up Matt's unrequited lust for Michael and Michael's curiosity and genuine feeling for Matt). And surely, some guy could have turned Jake's eye, considering that he slept with everyone else on the show. - But it's not all about the slash!
One element missing from a lot of fandoms is genfic. You can only slash the same characters in so many ways before you run out of ideas. Both the HP and Buffy fandoms seem to lack much in the way of genfic, and I'm not sure why this is. It's just as unfortunate that most of the people writing Outsiders fic are teenage girls who can't think beyond adding a sister to the Curtis family. The book's angst and variety of characters could easily make good fic - just add writer, and stir. - It's all about the word play (la, la, la, la, la).
Okay, so I'm an unabashed Anglophile, and sorry, world, the British do it best. Most of the appeal of HP, to me, lies in J K Rowling's use of language and the subtle humour that extends from the unexpected or understated. Buffy, with a much more American vocabulary, has the same type of word-based humour (and I have to think that Joss' history as an expatriate in England is the reason for it).
For me, this means that most authors aren't going to hit the mark when they write fic in these fandoms. I feel less attached to style in the Tolkien fandom because Tolkien had some distinctly different styles depending on what he was writing. The Silm is written in a biblical style that doesn't transfer well to more detailed stories, and when Tolkien wrote more detailed stories, he used a less formal style. Obviously, there are some limitations - you want your orcs to have a bit of a Cockney sound, your elves to use more archaic language, and your narration to have the style appropriate to the POV character. Aragorn probably wouldn't say, 'Yo, Lego-man!', and only Claudio can make cell-phones work in Middle-earth (as long as he doesn't take collect calls from Glorfindel).
Side note: I've seen some rather hilarious mistakes in Outsiders fic. If you don't know the book, it takes place in Tulsa in the early 1960s. Cell phones, faxes, and my favourite - an air-bag - all make appearances.
So, tell me - what books/movies/shows/etc do you enjoy, but find the fic unappealing? Is it just that you can't find what you want to read? What turns you off about fanfic in those fandoms? And, conversely, what is it about the fandoms in which you do read/write fic that inspires you?