FIC: The Chuck Writes Story - Afterword 5

Sep 17, 2011 16:44

Title: The Chuck Writes Story: Afterword 5
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: gen. Chuck, Becky
Rating: PG-13 for themes
Length: Total fic: 30,000. This part: 2,000
Summary: Castiel is the new BNF in town. Lettered is amused.
A/N: Please see notes here.
Previous parts: The Chuck Writes Story part 1 and part 2 | Afterword | Afterword 2 | Afterword 3Read more... )

genre: gen, fic, fandom: spn, fic: the chuck writes fic, rating: pg-13, length: multi-parts

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whoops got long... bulletcourier October 19 2011, 08:41:38 UTC
I started writing fanfiction when I was in the second grade--I didn't know other people did it. I didn't know other people didn't do it. I didn't know what it was called; I just knew I had THOUGHTS I wanted to write. Fandom is very important to me.

My first experience was looking for episode summaries of anime online because I couldn't readily watch them, and getting confused by fanfiction. I wish urban dictionary existed back then. I regularly ended up in the middle of fic that disturbed kiddo!me because I couldn't read the summary discourse. Do you remember the citrus code? Or was that a Japanese-fandom thing? Oh man...

I mean, obviously the canon lends itself to this sort of exploration, but I think it's often possible to draw ourselves into fics or ask questions about canon and fandom through the text.

Oh, of course! There are so many really clever and imaginative people out there. But, a little part of my glee in reading this was that this whole fic was technically in-universe and canon-based to a degree that to my knowledge is pretty rare.

I'm new to this fandom. I don't really know anyone and I've found it . . . rather weird.

I bet, like Chuck, you will make a bunch of friends really soon now ;D

I'm sort of in a similar boat, because I'm new to this fandom too. I've come from a place where (incredibly luckily, not being a writer or artist) I got to know the people I admired most. Now I'm admiring people from afar all over again, and to top it off, I have nothing to give back to this fandom, having no skill in anything relevant.

But if reading comments is something that makes you feel happy and motivated to write, then I guess that's something I can do! Hahaha forever dean_lives

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Re: whoops got long... lettered October 20 2011, 07:36:58 UTC
I do remember the citrus code; they used it a lot on HP fics. But I really have no idea what it meant.

this whole fic was technically in-universe

Oh yeah, definitely; I don't know any other fandom you could do that with.

I bet, like Chuck, you will make a bunch of friends really soon now ;D

hhahaha. Well. Chuck only got one friend. He did get a lot of attention by being epically wanky, though. The idea for this actually started out with Chuck wondering why he didn't get very many reviews, and then starting to write porn just so he could get comments.

I have nothing to give back to this fandom

That's not true! I think that discussion is just as important to fandom as fanworks. Also, I think dean_lives might've been my favorite character to create, and you're a lot more articulate than she usually was.

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Re: whoops got long... bulletcourier November 2 2011, 16:29:04 UTC
Don't worry. Incest is a game the whole family can play.

*pratfall*

I think if I felt guilty about all of them I'd go stark raving. So I decided I can really only feel guilty about the way I act (which is plenty fuel enough!)

I aspire to get to the place you're at someday ;A;/

Seriously. It's hard for me to reconicle the sexual element with the fact that Supernatural's be-all-end-all value placed on family fulfils some fandom need, some kind of resonance or cuttingly deep relatability I didn't realise I was missing in series more based on friendship or romance or comrades or what have you. I used to think this one particular fic in another fandom was amazing because it actually made me cry. Now, I can't even count how many Supernatural fics have made me cry, they hit me in such a way.

I know theoretically it's fine to ship Sam and Dean, you know, the specific characters with their specific story... but it's hard to forget how many parallels there are to my whole life which my brothers themselves gleefully point out all the time, and how am I supposed to feel about us cosplaying them for halloween... and there's the guilt and shame creeping back :P

I'm so stupidly in love with this show and this fandom, though, so I think I'll have time to work through it. And besides, it's probably good for me, helping me understand myself a bit better. So maybe in that light... the wincest-poking meta stuff was good for my personal growth?? Ahahaha

If you're making translations in order that others may consume the thing you love, I'd think you'd want to go for the author's version of the text. If you want to do something transformative, you go for your own.

It's interesting, though. Like, I try really hard to make it as close to the author's version as possible... but at the same time, I can only guess at their intentions from the text they produced using the limited cutlural and metalinguistic knowledge I have. It's not like they're sitting there with me explaining their thought processes to me, so how close can I be? The comics and novelisations of the game are the trickiest. Some fans translate more like localisation, adding details of their own and changing the flow of the story to match a Western expectation of what a novel scene should be like. Whereas my versions are almost to-the-letter, and look so much bonier and stilted in English than they really would come off in the original cultural context. I used to worry so much about whether that was important. Does atmosphere count as author intention too? With time I guess I found a standard I felt comfortable holding myself to and I just strive for that.

And it's weird, because to me, there is such a distinction, and yet not the distinction that some authors, or some of those who are anti-fanfic, like to draw. The author's story is theirs and people shouldn't try to change it or make money off of it or say they know the one true meaning. But your reading is yours, and that's very precious.

Absolutely! Figuring that out is how I grew up and learned not to be so annoyed with people I thought were 'misreading' the text. For example, there are a lot of fangirls who seem to have a very different image of the characters than I do, and the me from only a while ago would be compiling wanky essays at them full of episode script quoting and what have you. I still get those twinges, especially when I see fans like that calling the version onscreen OOC when things happen that they don't like. But, now I think I understand that the version of the character that lives in their heart means a lot to them, has likely helped them make friends and learn things and create things and grow just like I know some characters have for me, and they have every right to feel that and love that version of them, even if I don't see them on my television. And, in the end, the version I 'see on my television' is really just the version in my own heart, too...

Which is why I just do not understand anti-fanfic mentality. Where do you draw the line between anti-transformative and anti-imagination? Whether you post it online or not? Doesn't seem like that really cuts it, to me.

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bulletcourier November 2 2011, 16:29:32 UTC

What the author intended or what other people get from it aren't nearly as important as what the text means to you.

I'm still deeply grateful to the people at the SPN wikia who painstakingly compile notes on all the intertextual and cultural references :P

They're about fandom, but their also about religion. And when you think about it . . . well, there are a lot of similarities between the two, in my humble opinion.

Oh my god! So so so true!! You know, I didn't join the dots until you said that, but I remember my mum telling me something similar a long time ago. I remember being fourteen and complaining to her about a friend of mine who was a born again Christian, who talked about nothing else. My mum said to me, what about you and your Japanese cartoons, don't you shove those down your friends throats because you want to share with them how great it is? Doesn't everyone want to be connected to something bigger than themselves? Isn't that why you're always on the internet? Don't judge her way of fulfilling the same need you have. It made me feel like a dick at the time. I don't know why I didn't think of that when SPN was making all those religion/fandom parallels.

I do remember the citrus code; they used it a lot on HP fics. But I really have no idea what it meant.

The way I understood it, a 'lemon' usually meant NC-17 sex, a 'lime' meant a sexual scene but perhaps fade-to-black or without penetration/orgasm, and 'citrusy' meant light sexual behaviour. But I have no idea why use sour fruit to rank it!

That's not true! I think that discussion is just as important to fandom as fanworks. Also, I think dean_lives might've been my favorite character to create, and you're a lot more articulate than she usually was.

Ahaha, well I'm a lazy student, not a busy lawyer with cats to play with, which might mean something! Speaking of dean_lives, I did really love the way you developed her. If this fic had a tv tropes page, her post would have been a Crowning Moment of Awesome right there, I was flailing and grinning so much.

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OH ALSO bulletcourier November 2 2011, 16:50:28 UTC
Sorry for the spamming!

You're so well versed in fandom and stuff, so I'd be surprised if you hadn't, but I read this meta fic yesterday and thought of you.

Also, zimshan's journal is full of really cool meta on cinematography, the use of colour, music. And they have a meta rec tag on their delicious as well!

There's also a woman named Amanda on tumblr, who posts both essay-like meta and fic-like meta on lots of different topics, that I really love. If you look at the links on the sidebar of her blog 9091 there's a lot to see.

I hope you find at least one interesting or new thing in any of that!

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