Thinky Fandom Thoughts, or Why I Don't Write About Books
So owlmoose had an entry a few days back, about whether some people are predisposed toward fanfiction. I thought it was very interesting, because it reminded me of some of my weird little fandom quirks.
I noted in the subject line that I don't write about books, and it's true. I almost always write video game fic. If you look at the tags on my ficjournal, there are only 2 non-video-game fandoms, each with one fic and the requisite archive page. I don't watch all that much anime, but I don't write for the ones I do watch (mostly because I've outgrown The Vision of Escaflowne and as much as I love pretty boys being assassin florists, I just don't have the energy for Weiß Kreuz fandom). This may change when I finally watch FMA, but whatever.
I think it's funny that I don't write fic about books, because my very first fic - before I knew what fic was, before I'd ever even heard of the Internet - was for Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels. I liked the world, and wanted to write in it. That horrible Mary-Sue-laden piece of garbage has long since been lost, four computers ago, and I never posted it anywhere or really shared it with anyone except Nicola, but to this day it is the only piece of fanfic I've ever written for a book. I don't feel the desire to write about characters in books, for some reason. I love them, I like to talk about them ad infinitum with friends who have also read the books, and I will re-read the books several times to enjoy the characters and world once again, but I don't feel that crashing demand of you will write this right now that I often get off video game characters.
I don't write in TV fandoms for the most part, either (we just won't mention the fanfic I wrote for Roar way the hell back in high school), but I think I do know why that is. The fandoms I would write in are Buffy, Firefly, and Boston Legal. I am not half so clever and witty as the writers for those shows, and therefore I will not make an ass of myself trying to write in the fandom. It'll fall flat and won't have the same element of awesome, so I refuse to do it (even if I totally want to write about Inara leaving the House and a handful of other things.) I don't want to be that person who, although not bad enough to end up on fanficrants, also isn't good enough to merit notice because I can't get the voice of the series correct. I'm perfectly willing to read in these fandoms, I just don't have any faith in my ability to write in them.
As for movies, I think I feel like there's not enough there to write about. I mean, it's two and a half hours if it's a really long one, and that is totally not enough time for me to get enough of a handle on a character to want to write about them an to do it well.
Ah, but video games. Video game fandoms are definitely my OTP when it comes to fic styles. I was talking about this with someone - please forgive me, I've forgotten who - and was trying to figure out why I love them so much, and I think it's because due to the style of the medium, most games do not provide you with full backstories for the characters, or they're covered in broad strokes and you want to know why. For example, Celes is a general with a full command, and she's eighteen years old. We know she was genetically engineered because it's in her in-game introduction screen. We know she is Magi-tek infused. This is all the game gives us for the eighteen years of her life before this point. What I want to know is: how could she be fully trained enough to have been a general - apparently for at least a year or two - by the time she reached what we would consider "adult" age? What must childhood be like for someone liek that? Or, for another example - we know General Leo declined the Magi-Tek infusion. Why? What did Gestahl say? How did it affect his relationship with Kefka, or later with Celes? How does it work into what he tells Terra on the boat?
Perhaps I have this sense of books as being "finished," internally complete, which in the case of many of my favourite series, they are, even if all the books aren't out yet. (Trying to add more to A Song of Ice and Fire, for example...) Video games, though, have all this wonderful stuff to play with and also every time I see something that's not explained immediately, I want to fiddle with it more. I played FF12 with a notebook open in front of me and wrote down interesting quotes, all the Bhujerban words and their translations derived from context, questions I wanted answered in fic, etc. as well as random ideas. I haven't been doing that with Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, nor Final Fantasy Tactics, but that latter one is because I can go back and re-view basically anything I want. I only wish they'd let me view the stuff that's said in battle, like the discussion between Ramza and Gaffgarion at Golgorand.
Um, well. So. tl;dr. What types of fandoms do you find yourself drawn to? Is there a pattern? Why do you think that is?
I noted in the subject line that I don't write about books, and it's true. I almost always write video game fic. If you look at the tags on my ficjournal, there are only 2 non-video-game fandoms, each with one fic and the requisite archive page. I don't watch all that much anime, but I don't write for the ones I do watch (mostly because I've outgrown The Vision of Escaflowne and as much as I love pretty boys being assassin florists, I just don't have the energy for Weiß Kreuz fandom). This may change when I finally watch FMA, but whatever.
I think it's funny that I don't write fic about books, because my very first fic - before I knew what fic was, before I'd ever even heard of the Internet - was for Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels. I liked the world, and wanted to write in it. That horrible Mary-Sue-laden piece of garbage has long since been lost, four computers ago, and I never posted it anywhere or really shared it with anyone except Nicola, but to this day it is the only piece of fanfic I've ever written for a book. I don't feel the desire to write about characters in books, for some reason. I love them, I like to talk about them ad infinitum with friends who have also read the books, and I will re-read the books several times to enjoy the characters and world once again, but I don't feel that crashing demand of you will write this right now that I often get off video game characters.
I don't write in TV fandoms for the most part, either (we just won't mention the fanfic I wrote for Roar way the hell back in high school), but I think I do know why that is. The fandoms I would write in are Buffy, Firefly, and Boston Legal. I am not half so clever and witty as the writers for those shows, and therefore I will not make an ass of myself trying to write in the fandom. It'll fall flat and won't have the same element of awesome, so I refuse to do it (even if I totally want to write about Inara leaving the House and a handful of other things.) I don't want to be that person who, although not bad enough to end up on fanficrants, also isn't good enough to merit notice because I can't get the voice of the series correct. I'm perfectly willing to read in these fandoms, I just don't have any faith in my ability to write in them.
As for movies, I think I feel like there's not enough there to write about. I mean, it's two and a half hours if it's a really long one, and that is totally not enough time for me to get enough of a handle on a character to want to write about them an to do it well.
Ah, but video games. Video game fandoms are definitely my OTP when it comes to fic styles. I was talking about this with someone - please forgive me, I've forgotten who - and was trying to figure out why I love them so much, and I think it's because due to the style of the medium, most games do not provide you with full backstories for the characters, or they're covered in broad strokes and you want to know why. For example, Celes is a general with a full command, and she's eighteen years old. We know she was genetically engineered because it's in her in-game introduction screen. We know she is Magi-tek infused. This is all the game gives us for the eighteen years of her life before this point. What I want to know is: how could she be fully trained enough to have been a general - apparently for at least a year or two - by the time she reached what we would consider "adult" age? What must childhood be like for someone liek that? Or, for another example - we know General Leo declined the Magi-Tek infusion. Why? What did Gestahl say? How did it affect his relationship with Kefka, or later with Celes? How does it work into what he tells Terra on the boat?
Perhaps I have this sense of books as being "finished," internally complete, which in the case of many of my favourite series, they are, even if all the books aren't out yet. (Trying to add more to A Song of Ice and Fire, for example...) Video games, though, have all this wonderful stuff to play with and also every time I see something that's not explained immediately, I want to fiddle with it more. I played FF12 with a notebook open in front of me and wrote down interesting quotes, all the Bhujerban words and their translations derived from context, questions I wanted answered in fic, etc. as well as random ideas. I haven't been doing that with Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, nor Final Fantasy Tactics, but that latter one is because I can go back and re-view basically anything I want. I only wish they'd let me view the stuff that's said in battle, like the discussion between Ramza and Gaffgarion at Golgorand.
Um, well. So. tl;dr. What types of fandoms do you find yourself drawn to? Is there a pattern? Why do you think that is?