Don't stop *writing*, you numbskulls.
OK. Apparently some shy fanfic writers took my last post - the drinking game - as criticism, and are now haunted by that list of stereotypes and cannot bring themselves to write anymore, for fear that they will be ridiculed by people like me.
NO, NO, NO. That was not the point!
Dudes, please. I love it when Frodo moans in Elvish, or any language for that matter. I love it when the author remembers that he's wearing the mithril shirt and the Ring - it's a hell of lot better than forgetting he's wearing the mithril shirt and the Ring, when he should be. I love it when Sam flings off clothes in the garden. Hell, even Mary Sues can be entertaining in the hands of a good writer.
I first saw the drinking-game style of parody in a local university magazine when I was an undergrad. They wrote up drinking games for Star Trek (original) and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It had stuff like "Drink whenever Spock says 'logical,'" and "Drink whenever Picard wears his sexy chest-revealing bedclothes." Did this mean they wished the writers would stop having Spock say "logical," or wished someone would change Picard's wardrobe? I doubt it. They liked Star Trek just as it was; but they also remembered the cardinal rule: Fandom is Fucking Funny. So they poked fun at what they loved, just to show they could see the humor.
I wrote a Northern Exposure drinking game, many years ago. Did I want the writers to stop having Shelly call Holling "Big H"? No. Did I want the wardrobe people to take away Maurice's NASA hat or Ruth-Anne's "Born to Bingo" sweatshirt? Heck no. Did I want Ed to stop comparing things to old movies? No, dammit. I was merely pointing out the recurring themes which are so quirky, so beloved, and, if you think about them for a while, so silly.
And that's all I was doing with this list. Drinking games are not really criticism. If I wanted to criticize, I could have just written a list entitled Stuff I'm Sick Of In Fanfiction - and you know what? It wouldn't be the same exact list. No, the drinking game, as I was just discussing with teasel, is more like a scavenger hunt or a wildlife checklist: how many of these common species can you find? I do not mean to imply that every author should come up with a totally new and unheard-of species every time. That seldom works, in fact.
Everyone okay now? Everyone going to go finish writing their fanfics and stop worrying? Good. Whew.
NO, NO, NO. That was not the point!
Dudes, please. I love it when Frodo moans in Elvish, or any language for that matter. I love it when the author remembers that he's wearing the mithril shirt and the Ring - it's a hell of lot better than forgetting he's wearing the mithril shirt and the Ring, when he should be. I love it when Sam flings off clothes in the garden. Hell, even Mary Sues can be entertaining in the hands of a good writer.
I first saw the drinking-game style of parody in a local university magazine when I was an undergrad. They wrote up drinking games for Star Trek (original) and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It had stuff like "Drink whenever Spock says 'logical,'" and "Drink whenever Picard wears his sexy chest-revealing bedclothes." Did this mean they wished the writers would stop having Spock say "logical," or wished someone would change Picard's wardrobe? I doubt it. They liked Star Trek just as it was; but they also remembered the cardinal rule: Fandom is Fucking Funny. So they poked fun at what they loved, just to show they could see the humor.
I wrote a Northern Exposure drinking game, many years ago. Did I want the writers to stop having Shelly call Holling "Big H"? No. Did I want the wardrobe people to take away Maurice's NASA hat or Ruth-Anne's "Born to Bingo" sweatshirt? Heck no. Did I want Ed to stop comparing things to old movies? No, dammit. I was merely pointing out the recurring themes which are so quirky, so beloved, and, if you think about them for a while, so silly.
And that's all I was doing with this list. Drinking games are not really criticism. If I wanted to criticize, I could have just written a list entitled Stuff I'm Sick Of In Fanfiction - and you know what? It wouldn't be the same exact list. No, the drinking game, as I was just discussing with teasel, is more like a scavenger hunt or a wildlife checklist: how many of these common species can you find? I do not mean to imply that every author should come up with a totally new and unheard-of species every time. That seldom works, in fact.
Everyone okay now? Everyone going to go finish writing their fanfics and stop worrying? Good. Whew.