thoughts on visual fanwork in two very different fandoms

[isiscolo]

I figure with everyone away at Vividcon I can post about my shameful little secret, which is: I don't really like (most) vids. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because SGA has a lot of vidders and a lot of vids, and also because it has led me into some tangential thoughts about fanart and other visual derivatives

Comments

[angiepen]

I'm not into vids either. [shrug] One of the people who used to play in Palace did all kinds of vids. I watched one he did about Palace and it was cute, but I didn't bother with the next one. Raven did a Palace vid and I liked that 'cause it mentioned my character :P but I don't think that's quite the same as liking a vid for itself, you know? I've never bothered looking at any others, though. Nor do I bother with the "soundtracks" people make up for stories and fandoms; they strike me as being essentially songfics without the bother of adding original verbage to the inspirational songs, you know?

Oh, have I mentioned that I loathe songfics? I've run into one or two that I liked, which were always stories which happened to have songs incorporated as a necessary element, rather than the reposting of some song the writer likes with a few paras showing what Character X would be thinking if he heard that song, or some such rot. Sorry, boring. Give me some sort of plot or don't bother.

Like you, I'm not really a musical person. I've gone go through phases where I've obsessed over a single album, whether by a favorite artist or band (anything from Styx to Mozart), or a soundtrack (I was playing the Labyrinth soundtrack every night for months, doubtless driving my neighbors at the time crazy) but I haven't done even that for a long time. I don't know most of the songs used in either vids or songfics either, and no, that certainly doesn't help one's appreciation of... whatever it is people appreciate about vids and songfics. [wry smile]

The one songfic I really did like was an HP one, the name of which I can't recall now. [headdesk] It was graduation time (although Ginny was there for some reason I don't recall now) and the party committee had decided that karaoke would be just the thing.... :P Various students get up and sing special songs for the special person they've been secretly in love with for all these years, and various people end up doing the, "Oh, I never knew!! <3 <3 <3" thing and pairing off. Poor Ron's sitting there through the whole thing watching people getting together, including one or two he'd been crushing on, and finally goes, "Isn't anyone straight?!" Someone like Millicent flutters her eyelashes and goes, "I am!" It's hilarious and I think the reason I liked it despite the preponderance of included lyrics is that the songs were actually part of the story, necessary to it, produced and heard and reacted to by the characters, as opposed to something duct-taped in to carry most of the emotional load of the piece without actually being in the story itself, the way most songfics are.

Angie

[isiscolo]

For me, lyrics as anything other than a line or two as chapter epigraphs is obtrusive. I don't care whether or not a story was inspired by a song, but incorporating a song into a story jars me out of it. But I don't think of them as the same animal as vids.

[angiepen]

I agree, although it's more than that. For me, most songfics are an exercise in self-indulgence on the part of the writer. Fangirl hears a song, song makes her think of her favorite character(s) in some intensely emotional way. Fangirl writes songfic, half or more of the verbage of which is the song lyrics, and the main point of which is to communicate, "Hey, I heard this song and it made me think about how angsty/slashy/frustrated/whatever Joe and Bob are!" Guess what, hon? I don't care. [shrug] The writer of a songfic very rarely in my experience adds anything significant to the emotional content of the story besides what was already in the song itself, and needless to say most songfics have no plot whatsoever. To me, songfics are essentially the same as vids only with added words instead of added pictures, and the words serving essentially the same function (i.e., not much more than the creator saying, "Hey, look what this song reminded me of!") as the pictures in a vid.

The reason I liked that one HP story, though, is that the lyrics were part of the story. Yes, they were obtrusive, in that they stuck out, but they were meant to, for a reason, which to me makes it work. The lyrics weren't just a gimmick or a crutch; they were an integral part of the story, which wouldn't have worked at all without them. I just wish I could remember what it was called and where I found it. :/

Angie