Why the Buffyverse?
I was reading a fanfic musing over at shapinglight's journal. I started to respond, but it was getting a little long-ish, so I decided to do a post instead. It's an interesting read in general, but this question in particular stood out to me:
Which leads me to wondering why it is that the Buffyverse is still the only fictional world invented by other people ( Read more... )
Which leads me to wondering why it is that the Buffyverse is still the only fictional world invented by other people ( Read more... )
Unlike you, I had already done fanfic before BtVS came along (as I’ve observed elsewhere, I was writing fanfiction before the term itself was invented) … but with certain caveats. My first exposure to the phenomenon was by accidental acquaintance with a trio of girls in California who were recreational Trekkies and wrote stories to go along with that; and, yes, those stories were happily and unapologetically of the “me and my girlfriends on board the Enterprise” brand. I wrote in response to those tales, doing the same kind of shameless self-insertion. It was fun and never intended to be anything other than fun, but I cut my writing teeth in those exercises, and still remember the stories fondly even if I’ve never posted any of them (those were pre-Internet days) and almost certainly never will.
So, when during Buffy Season 3 I discovered this world of online ‘fanfiction’, the notion of writing in someone else’s world was one I had already explored to some extent. What surprised me, and still is difficult for me to fully understand, is the original question: why is this world so much more attractive, in writing terms, than any other?
Some of it, I think, comes with possibilities. That’s one of the most potentiating things about the Buffyverse: it’s magic, literally. You can (and I have done so) turn back time, explore other universes, summon up the ghosts of the past, imbue people with extraordinary abilities and see what happens as a result, raise the dead, rewrite the past … and it’s still consistent with the laws of that canonical reality. (Maybe that’s one of the secrets of why the original STAR TREK inspired so much fan-writing, its setting providing any number of jumping-off points.)
Some of it has to do with vivid characters, well drawn, following out long character arcs wherein we get to see layers of personality and development and internal contradiction and long struggles toward this or resisting that. (Another check-box for STAR TREK, at least the vivid characters; character arcs and development, not as much.) As someone elsewhere observed - I don’t remember where, it may have been one of the actual books written about the Buffy phenomenon - someone watching Season 1 could, if told that someday Cordelia would turn dark and try to destroy the world, be able see and understand the possibility, but would not have been able to make any such extrapolation if told that Willow would be the Dark One Rising … and, yet, when it happened, it was something that fans had been seeing coming for a long time. (In my own case, when Buffy kissed Spike at the end of “Once More With Feeling” - or, later, jumped him for I-hate-myself sex at the end of “Smashed” - my reaction was not Oh, give me a break!, but GOD, no! I was never a Spuffy fan, I hated the very thought … and I hated this, but I believed it, because the people creating the show had built it into a convincing reality.)
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Yeah, I think this is very true. The material definitely lends itself to diversion, extrapolation, experimentation, etc. And I can't discount that it was this, plus the built-in ease of internet publishing, that tempted me to write my story in the first place, and that I probably wouldn't have done so absent either element. I guess that makes me kind of a wimp, creatively speaking, particularly if the bit about Internet ease is true. Would I have submitted stories to fanzines? Exchanged hand-typed chapters with people over long distances? I'm not sure, but I somehow doubt it.
I do know that I'd never even considered writing fanfiction at all before 2006, and never considered writing it about anything else. I'd written lots of original short stories that I'd never tried to publish, and even had some poetry published in an anthology, once upon a time. But fanfiction was completely alien terrain for me, from both a reading and writing standpoint. I think a lot of what spurred me on has to do with your second point here about the credible flexibility of these characters, and the clarity of their arcs. I think that's also why I never really felt the urge to write anything other than post-series material. Trying to extend and explore the established arcs rather than alter them made me feel like I was paying my respects to the original artists while still getting to have my say.
(Not to say anything against the extreme (and often smart, entertaining and wildly creative) alterations some ff authors make to the canon. Those can be superb to read, but it was just never my bag as a ff writer).
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I do know that I'd never even considered writing fanfiction at all before 2006, and never considered writing it about anything else. I'd written...
In my case, some short fiction, comics, and essays that got published in various places. Oh and that one quickly abandoned rip-off of The Hobbit when I was eleven. Heh.
I didn't get much enjoyment out of the writing itself, and at times it was excruciating.
Like you, writing for me is, um, not fun. There is a Robert Crumb comic that sums up the experience for me: Hippy gnome Mr. Natural is faced with a sink full of dirty dishes. He sighs, pushes up his sleeves and washes them, cussing a blue streak and snarling the whole time. At the end, the dishes are gleaming, the sun is shining through the window, and he says with a smile, "Ahhh. Job well done!"
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I just conducted some sciencematifical tests, and have determined within a 97.9989% certainly that I am "not specifically you." I know, I was also surprised, but we can't argue with Sci Ants!
There is a Robert Crumb comic that sums up the experience for me: Hippy gnome Mr. Natural is faced with a sink full of dirty dishes. He sighs, pushes up his sleeves and washes them, cussing a blue streak and snarling the whole time. At the end, the dishes are gleaming, the sun is shining through the window, and he says with a smile, "Ahhh. Job well done!"
Yes! I recall this one, and that general vein in his stuff. It's interesting... some of the artists I disagree with the most (like Crumb and Douglas Adams, to take two examples), are also among my favorites. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT, YO?
(rhetorical question)
(unless, that is, you have a good answer)
(EDIT: and as long as that answer isn't "42")
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It is further evidence for the "you might be me" file. Take that, Sci Ants!
But seriously, it works nicely with your whole "the author is dead" business, or more accurately that great art transcends the artist.
*dusts hands*
ETA: Just read a 30 Rock article, in which the largely very liberal creators have made a supreme effort to have the conservative Jack Donaghy character almost always be right, because the story just works better that way. Hmmm. Must find quote. I think I had a point...oh yeah, great art will almost never come in the form of a sermon. Except when it does: that one on the Mount, the I Have a Dream one, etc.
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This is probably as good an explanation as any as to why most of the fanfic I read is post-series (although I also have a kink for fics that go AU from The Gift.) Whatever flaws of the series I love the stories in their entirety enough that I really don't feel a need to "fix" them or disturb their integrity.
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