In which I tell you my Life Story according to Writing
upupa_epopsjust posted this meme:
Ask me a writing-related question in the comments. It can be about my writing or writing in general, whatever you want. Questions can be as wacky as you want. Ask me about characters, quirks, habits, opinions, favorites, difficulties, fandoms, inspirations, ficathons, challenges, specific stories. Ask whatever! I'll answer and, in return, I will ask you a question at least loosely connected to yours.
And I asked in return: When/how do you make the choice between writing fic and composing a meta-post? Which do you find more fulfilling/easier? Which topics do you prefer writing about in either form?
Which the little minx shot back at me. And I needed to take a couple of days to think about it, because this is basically my Thesis - it's what I'm working on, every day. It's all I think about. And barreling it down to a short, coherent anything is a struggle. For what it's worth: Here it is.
The very first piece of fanfiction that I ever read, ever, I found after reading an article while doing research for a paper on BtVS my senior year of college. I was in a Fantasy Literature class in the Humanities Dept at my Uni, taught by a woman who has since won the Mr. Pointy Award at Slayage (I want to say twice?). Ergo: there I was, writing a paper on Buffy and I was psyched by the whole process. Four years of writing papers on 19thC Lit (my emphasis) had been filling, rewarding, amazing - I put my sweat and blood into each paper I write - but doing research and writing a paper on something so - fun?! It was like a dream. And in my research I came across descriptions/analysis for pieces of fic that were written while the show was still running. So of course, I'm a good college student, I look up each and every one. And I read. Each and every one. Which amounted to three or four. But at the time, that was like woah. And the one I remember vividly - the first fic experience, that I found through an academic paper, was The Game series by SaberShadowcat. It was Spike/Buffy and Willow/Angel and it blew my mind. But the most important thing that I found from reading The Game, was the mythology that Shadowcat built up around the vampires. So many interesting details about vampire behavior! It was awesome.
And then I started peeking around lj - I had already had an account (back then, I literally used lj as a personal journal; no fandom, no friends, I didn't have a flist, nothing. Just me, my words, and a computer) - and I found gabrielleabelle and found myself reading meta for the first time. I accidentally ruffled some feathers when I attempted - for the first time - to be in a fandom conversation and gryfndor_godess befriended me, which was awesome. And that was the beginnings of my flist. Which all happened because of an academic article about fanfic. At the time, I wasn't really sure what "flist" actually meant. I was quite the confused little chap.
The more I read fic and meta, the more my flist grew, the more I got to know the writers I was following, the more I realized that fanfic is meta. A lot of times, I would read a meta and the conversation that flowed out of it. There was talking and sharing and debating. And then you know - a flux of fic would suddenly appear. Or vise versa. A good piece of fic will prompt conversation, then others would write meta. It's hard, once you are in the community, to pick out the patterns - to see the ebb and flow of ideas and sharing and topics going back and forth. But for a newbie, it was all I saw. Now I'm so in it - I know that my writing is influenced by all of you ... but where/when/how certain cycles of themes, topics, characters, etc. come and go ... I no longer have my finger on. I am now watching more than one fandom now, instead of just the Whedonverse, and that changes one's perception of flow, because there is just MORE going on. My flist is larger. I couldn't be happier about that. But at the beginning, I was so new and so obsessed with how exciting you all are that I felt more like an observer than a participant for a long while.
To quote myself (I'm pompous, you should all shun me)::
What I think surprised me the most... and I know this is going to sound demeaning or something, but it's not meant to ... is the level of discourse in the fics that I stumbled upon: Taking a break from the 15-page final paper and stepping into a fic was the most humbling experience... what I'm struggling to say - nay: what I take hours to research, compose, and get a grade on - is happening in fic. It's all the same thing, at it's base, really.
I still find this to be true, the discourse and level of analysis in fic still wows and astounds me. I am every day awed and inspired by this community that I have found ... err... barged in upon. I feel so often like an interloper, but I don't mean to be.
Anyway, when I started to write fanfic, my first piece was Dawn, which I posted in October 2010 - I still feel like a baby. I still am a baby. And my specific intent of that piece was not to be analytical or answer any questions or anything. I had a scene in my head and I thought, "Why the hell not?" and wrote it out. That piece was the beginnings of my BtVS/AtS alt-verse that now is the space where I write all Buffy fanfic and where I realized that Dawn was going to be the topic of my Thesis.
Because - you see - part of the world-building of my alt-verse is that Dawn, being the Key to the Universe, would be able to see and experience every version of herself - built on the basic principle that with each decision, the universe splits, creating an infinite amount of parallel lives/universes/possibilities - not only in her own universe, but every version of any written universe. Basically, I posit that fiction creates just as many universe-possibilities as our own "Reality" and Dawn can see it all. Why not? She's the Key to the Universe after all. The Key to Reality as it is known. And when I established that in my fiction - without even thinking about it in any other way - I realized that Dawn's fluidity in narrative, her manipulation of narrative, her placement within the space of the series ... is what I was trying to tackle in my fiction and was also something that I wanted to address in my research. So I'm writing my Thesis on Dawn Summers.
This is my long-winded way of saying: meta and fic are in essence, the same for me. My feelings/thoughts about the parallel structure of Katherine and Elena's narratives? I wrote a fic for that. Trying to explain how much Nina Dobrev looks like SMG and Michelle Trachtenburg had a love child - and what that might mean on more than just a superficial "PRETTY!!!" level? I wrote a fic for that. Trying to establish some common-sense speculation to the act of "compulsion" in tVD? I wrote a fic for that. Comparing/Contrasting DElena to Catherine/Heathcliff? I wrote a fic for that. Explaining my reading of Faith as the sad, forgotten middle child of the Summers family: I wrote a fic for that.
What I'm trying to say - is not so much that I write fic all the time. Or that I only write fic. But I could just as easily have written an essay or a meta on any of these topics. I chose to write fic - not because they are different, but because I find them to be the same in a way. Or at least, that is what I want to contend in my research. That they are the same. That the difference between meta and fic is negligible, a farce. There are some things, sure, that I think of as being "fic-friendly-only".... smut for example. But at the same time, the gender/sexual dynamics and decisions that are made in smut are (sometimes) just as much of an "analysis" of the original text as a meta that dissects the symbolism of DElena's hands in the series.
Marta responded to my original inquiry that for her, fic is about emotion and language. While meta has more of an objective emotional distance. I love this idea.
I think, for myself, of fic more of a playground where my ideas get room to play with the characters to see if they will work. If you have read all of this, you are a writer - or at least interested in the writing process; and therefore I feel confident in giving an anecdote:
Last night, a friend of mine asked me about my writing process, in terms of fiction... and silly little me, I didn't quite know how to respond. When he clarified with: Do you edit much, etc. etc.? And I thought about it for a minute then said: Most of what I write comes out in quick bursts and then it is impossible to edit them away. I once had characters literally disappear. I still don't know where they are. This was SEVEN YEARS AGO. And recently, with my tvd:bigbang, my character misbehaved, pushed me into a space I wasn't expecting. But there was no going back. The characters know what they are doing. I didn't erase and start over, I was where I was and I had to continue and deal with it. My friend made some profound remark (he was "smoking" and thought everything he said was profound at that point) that suggested that the characters are a symbol of our mind: that when my characters disappeared, it was because my brain had come to a road block. I just sat there and thought:
The characters know what they are doing.
I have been growing this sense of ... value in participation. What I think is different about meta/fic from academic essays, is the participation level in a direct, immediate conversation. Academia necessarily dictates a certain level of solitary work. But getting my hands in and working with the characters themselves: I feel like I'm accessing something more than just my own thoughts. Sometimes characters get darker than we anticipate. Sometimes they hate the plot or disappear into thin air. Writers say this all the time. So there's this sense that ... if I have an idea that I'd like to pursue or work through, it helps - it is almost becoming necessary - that I take the literal character and work it through with them. If, for example, while writing my Katherine/Elena piece(s) the parallels weren't working, my language didn't come out right, something felt off... then I would need to start over in my analysis of them. If the fic - that works with their parallels - won't work, then I would need to think about it from a new way. There is something essentially True about characters - because of that I personally find it difficult to force them to do something OOC. Ergo - I typically write in canon. Even if I hate it (*coughHPEpiloguecough*), I follow the rules. Because the characters are already there swimming in the rules. The reason why my Dawn-AU works is because at any time, she can peek in at "our" version of Dawn and comment on her. They exist simultaneously. Or my Jeremy-compulsion fic, I "rewrote" a section of tVD S3... but in such a way that it will still fit within the parameters of the series.
And that, I believe, is how fic works regardless. If the fic is working "correctly" - if the writer is following the characters' lead and allowing the story to develop organically, then the "Truth" of the character will remain and can reveal to us - the readers and writers and audience - what that Truth is. What the essential building blocks of that character are.
But I couldn't have come to that conclusion, if I didn't write fic. If I had sat in a dusty room and read essays about the sociological implications of lj and fanfic.net and the internet... I wouldn't have been able to work through that in the same way.
For me, the emotional and the academic are so intrinsicly tied, I cannot separate them. And though aesthetically I can sometimes spend more time on my use of language in a fic than in an essay - I find that my academic writing is more often than not dependent upon my language. Fic is just another place for me to play with words. I don't have many fandom-related things that I can't work out in both an academic and a creative way. Even LOST - for which I run a podcast - I don't write fic in, but I do make pic!spam/backgrounds for... usually with a direct purpose, and a specific "story" that I want to tell with them. Which I'm placing on the same level.
I find it fascinating when I learn where others draw the line between fic and meta - between the creative and the analytical. For me, it is the same. And also for me - I find the same amount in both for both in most people's writing. There's just so much meat in the decisions fic writers make when they write. And there's so much creativity in the way writers compose meta. I love everything about the ways they are the same!
And now, I guess, that I have completely confused myself and wrote myself around in circles, it's time to open the floor to you, my darling flisties :)
Ask me a writing-related question in the comments. It can be about my writing or writing in general, whatever you want. Questions can be as wacky as you want. Ask me about characters, quirks, habits, opinions, favorites, difficulties, fandoms, inspirations, ficathons, challenges, specific stories. Ask whatever! I'll answer and, in return, I will ask you a question at least loosely connected to yours.
And I asked in return: When/how do you make the choice between writing fic and composing a meta-post? Which do you find more fulfilling/easier? Which topics do you prefer writing about in either form?
Which the little minx shot back at me. And I needed to take a couple of days to think about it, because this is basically my Thesis - it's what I'm working on, every day. It's all I think about. And barreling it down to a short, coherent anything is a struggle. For what it's worth: Here it is.
The very first piece of fanfiction that I ever read, ever, I found after reading an article while doing research for a paper on BtVS my senior year of college. I was in a Fantasy Literature class in the Humanities Dept at my Uni, taught by a woman who has since won the Mr. Pointy Award at Slayage (I want to say twice?). Ergo: there I was, writing a paper on Buffy and I was psyched by the whole process. Four years of writing papers on 19thC Lit (my emphasis) had been filling, rewarding, amazing - I put my sweat and blood into each paper I write - but doing research and writing a paper on something so - fun?! It was like a dream. And in my research I came across descriptions/analysis for pieces of fic that were written while the show was still running. So of course, I'm a good college student, I look up each and every one. And I read. Each and every one. Which amounted to three or four. But at the time, that was like woah. And the one I remember vividly - the first fic experience, that I found through an academic paper, was The Game series by SaberShadowcat. It was Spike/Buffy and Willow/Angel and it blew my mind. But the most important thing that I found from reading The Game, was the mythology that Shadowcat built up around the vampires. So many interesting details about vampire behavior! It was awesome.
And then I started peeking around lj - I had already had an account (back then, I literally used lj as a personal journal; no fandom, no friends, I didn't have a flist, nothing. Just me, my words, and a computer) - and I found gabrielleabelle and found myself reading meta for the first time. I accidentally ruffled some feathers when I attempted - for the first time - to be in a fandom conversation and gryfndor_godess befriended me, which was awesome. And that was the beginnings of my flist. Which all happened because of an academic article about fanfic. At the time, I wasn't really sure what "flist" actually meant. I was quite the confused little chap.
The more I read fic and meta, the more my flist grew, the more I got to know the writers I was following, the more I realized that fanfic is meta. A lot of times, I would read a meta and the conversation that flowed out of it. There was talking and sharing and debating. And then you know - a flux of fic would suddenly appear. Or vise versa. A good piece of fic will prompt conversation, then others would write meta. It's hard, once you are in the community, to pick out the patterns - to see the ebb and flow of ideas and sharing and topics going back and forth. But for a newbie, it was all I saw. Now I'm so in it - I know that my writing is influenced by all of you ... but where/when/how certain cycles of themes, topics, characters, etc. come and go ... I no longer have my finger on. I am now watching more than one fandom now, instead of just the Whedonverse, and that changes one's perception of flow, because there is just MORE going on. My flist is larger. I couldn't be happier about that. But at the beginning, I was so new and so obsessed with how exciting you all are that I felt more like an observer than a participant for a long while.
To quote myself (I'm pompous, you should all shun me)::
What I think surprised me the most... and I know this is going to sound demeaning or something, but it's not meant to ... is the level of discourse in the fics that I stumbled upon: Taking a break from the 15-page final paper and stepping into a fic was the most humbling experience... what I'm struggling to say - nay: what I take hours to research, compose, and get a grade on - is happening in fic. It's all the same thing, at it's base, really.
I still find this to be true, the discourse and level of analysis in fic still wows and astounds me. I am every day awed and inspired by this community that I have found ... err... barged in upon. I feel so often like an interloper, but I don't mean to be.
Anyway, when I started to write fanfic, my first piece was Dawn, which I posted in October 2010 - I still feel like a baby. I still am a baby. And my specific intent of that piece was not to be analytical or answer any questions or anything. I had a scene in my head and I thought, "Why the hell not?" and wrote it out. That piece was the beginnings of my BtVS/AtS alt-verse that now is the space where I write all Buffy fanfic and where I realized that Dawn was going to be the topic of my Thesis.
Because - you see - part of the world-building of my alt-verse is that Dawn, being the Key to the Universe, would be able to see and experience every version of herself - built on the basic principle that with each decision, the universe splits, creating an infinite amount of parallel lives/universes/possibilities - not only in her own universe, but every version of any written universe. Basically, I posit that fiction creates just as many universe-possibilities as our own "Reality" and Dawn can see it all. Why not? She's the Key to the Universe after all. The Key to Reality as it is known. And when I established that in my fiction - without even thinking about it in any other way - I realized that Dawn's fluidity in narrative, her manipulation of narrative, her placement within the space of the series ... is what I was trying to tackle in my fiction and was also something that I wanted to address in my research. So I'm writing my Thesis on Dawn Summers.
This is my long-winded way of saying: meta and fic are in essence, the same for me. My feelings/thoughts about the parallel structure of Katherine and Elena's narratives? I wrote a fic for that. Trying to explain how much Nina Dobrev looks like SMG and Michelle Trachtenburg had a love child - and what that might mean on more than just a superficial "PRETTY!!!" level? I wrote a fic for that. Trying to establish some common-sense speculation to the act of "compulsion" in tVD? I wrote a fic for that. Comparing/Contrasting DElena to Catherine/Heathcliff? I wrote a fic for that. Explaining my reading of Faith as the sad, forgotten middle child of the Summers family: I wrote a fic for that.
What I'm trying to say - is not so much that I write fic all the time. Or that I only write fic. But I could just as easily have written an essay or a meta on any of these topics. I chose to write fic - not because they are different, but because I find them to be the same in a way. Or at least, that is what I want to contend in my research. That they are the same. That the difference between meta and fic is negligible, a farce. There are some things, sure, that I think of as being "fic-friendly-only".... smut for example. But at the same time, the gender/sexual dynamics and decisions that are made in smut are (sometimes) just as much of an "analysis" of the original text as a meta that dissects the symbolism of DElena's hands in the series.
Marta responded to my original inquiry that for her, fic is about emotion and language. While meta has more of an objective emotional distance. I love this idea.
I think, for myself, of fic more of a playground where my ideas get room to play with the characters to see if they will work. If you have read all of this, you are a writer - or at least interested in the writing process; and therefore I feel confident in giving an anecdote:
Last night, a friend of mine asked me about my writing process, in terms of fiction... and silly little me, I didn't quite know how to respond. When he clarified with: Do you edit much, etc. etc.? And I thought about it for a minute then said: Most of what I write comes out in quick bursts and then it is impossible to edit them away. I once had characters literally disappear. I still don't know where they are. This was SEVEN YEARS AGO. And recently, with my tvd:bigbang, my character misbehaved, pushed me into a space I wasn't expecting. But there was no going back. The characters know what they are doing. I didn't erase and start over, I was where I was and I had to continue and deal with it. My friend made some profound remark (he was "smoking" and thought everything he said was profound at that point) that suggested that the characters are a symbol of our mind: that when my characters disappeared, it was because my brain had come to a road block. I just sat there and thought:
The characters know what they are doing.
I have been growing this sense of ... value in participation. What I think is different about meta/fic from academic essays, is the participation level in a direct, immediate conversation. Academia necessarily dictates a certain level of solitary work. But getting my hands in and working with the characters themselves: I feel like I'm accessing something more than just my own thoughts. Sometimes characters get darker than we anticipate. Sometimes they hate the plot or disappear into thin air. Writers say this all the time. So there's this sense that ... if I have an idea that I'd like to pursue or work through, it helps - it is almost becoming necessary - that I take the literal character and work it through with them. If, for example, while writing my Katherine/Elena piece(s) the parallels weren't working, my language didn't come out right, something felt off... then I would need to start over in my analysis of them. If the fic - that works with their parallels - won't work, then I would need to think about it from a new way. There is something essentially True about characters - because of that I personally find it difficult to force them to do something OOC. Ergo - I typically write in canon. Even if I hate it (*coughHPEpiloguecough*), I follow the rules. Because the characters are already there swimming in the rules. The reason why my Dawn-AU works is because at any time, she can peek in at "our" version of Dawn and comment on her. They exist simultaneously. Or my Jeremy-compulsion fic, I "rewrote" a section of tVD S3... but in such a way that it will still fit within the parameters of the series.
And that, I believe, is how fic works regardless. If the fic is working "correctly" - if the writer is following the characters' lead and allowing the story to develop organically, then the "Truth" of the character will remain and can reveal to us - the readers and writers and audience - what that Truth is. What the essential building blocks of that character are.
But I couldn't have come to that conclusion, if I didn't write fic. If I had sat in a dusty room and read essays about the sociological implications of lj and fanfic.net and the internet... I wouldn't have been able to work through that in the same way.
For me, the emotional and the academic are so intrinsicly tied, I cannot separate them. And though aesthetically I can sometimes spend more time on my use of language in a fic than in an essay - I find that my academic writing is more often than not dependent upon my language. Fic is just another place for me to play with words. I don't have many fandom-related things that I can't work out in both an academic and a creative way. Even LOST - for which I run a podcast - I don't write fic in, but I do make pic!spam/backgrounds for... usually with a direct purpose, and a specific "story" that I want to tell with them. Which I'm placing on the same level.
I find it fascinating when I learn where others draw the line between fic and meta - between the creative and the analytical. For me, it is the same. And also for me - I find the same amount in both for both in most people's writing. There's just so much meat in the decisions fic writers make when they write. And there's so much creativity in the way writers compose meta. I love everything about the ways they are the same!
And now, I guess, that I have completely confused myself and wrote myself around in circles, it's time to open the floor to you, my darling flisties :)