possibly I'm overthinking this
Recently I decided that as something of a fic writing experiment, I should break out of my habitual mold and try to write a sort of fic I usually do not write: fluffy ship fic. The idea was spurred primarily by running into a couple of pairings that I wanted to read fic about but whose fandoms had a dearth of the sort of thing I wanted to read. If you want something done right, do it yourself, yes?
Easier said than done, perhaps. I have written a draft of a fic about Mac and Stella from CSI: NY. In many ways, doing what I've done so far has sufficiently scratched my itch, and I might be happy enough never to post it. It's not like I'm really in touch with the audience for this kind of thing, after all, so I don't exactly expect a large response; I've mostly just done this for myself. Nevertheless, I might as well finish it off and post it. Except I've run into a bit of a conundrum. I got the draft back from the World's Best Beta, gabolange, and among her comments, she mentioned that to a certain extent she felt like she could have swapped out the names and the story, or at least parts of it, would have worked for any number of pairings.
My first thought was, "oh, yeah, I should fix that; the ability to swap out the names is not what one wants in fic, obviously! And I always try to be so particular about characterization." But then I had a second thought: "isn't the interchangeability sort of the point of shippy fic???"
For me, at least, I think it may be. Fluffy ship fic is not my favorite kind of fic to read, but I do get on little binges when I like to read a lot of it. And I'll read the good, the bad, and the ugly (as long as there's at least some evidence that the person is familiar with the use of the comma), but there are certain tropes that work well for me. And I'll read dozens of basically identical stories, for various pairings, and the pleasure in it does not come from characterization but from the replaying of particular tropes. I gravitate to the same sorts of stories for pretty much any pairing I'm interested in reading fluffy fic about. I'm not quite sure what to do with that realization, but there it is.
The problem, however, is that in my favorite kind of fic to read, which is also the kind of fic I ordinarily try to write, I am all about characterization. Characterization, in fact, is the entire point: I write fic (at least most of the time) because I'm trying to figure something out about a character. I think of it more as an analytical process rather than a creative process (though I'd be careful not to draw too fine a distinction between those categories).
At present, however, I find myself at a bit of an impasse. The kind of fluffy ship fic I like to read, the kind I thought I was trying to write in this current Mac/Stella piece, is not just different in genre than the kind of fic I ordinarily write, it is in fact predicated on ideas antithetical to the kind of fic I ordinarily write. And now I'm not quite sure what to do. I mean, chances are good that I will do my best to revise the fic to include more particular characterization, but there comes a point at which all fluffy ship fic, at least for most pairings (an exception would be Booth and Brennan, whose canonical relationship pretty much is fluffy ship fic), strikes me as fundamentally out of character. Is it possible to suspend disbelief about characterization enough to pull off fluffy ship fic, yet also do characterization well enough that you can't just swap out the names with those of another pairing? I know it must be--the best writers of shippy fic can do this, I think. I'm just not at all sure I can pull it off, nor am I entirely sure I want to, if getting too particular about the characterization would interfere with the basic pleasure of the repetitive reading of particular tropes.
It strikes me, though, that I may compartmentalize my fannish activity a lot more than many people do. There are certain kinds of shows and characters about which I feel truly and actively fannish these days, the kinds of shows and characters that make me want to write fic and meta, the kinds that make me really think. And with those, I'm increasingly drawn to gen fic (to read and write), or to really complicated, messy, and angsty pairings. But I still like my candy, which I indulge in in an entirely different set of shows and characters, about which I am not actually inclined to be very fannish. I'll watch with enthusiasm and read lots of mediocre ship fic, but that's that. Until I had to decide to go stretch my writing muscles... ;)
ETA: So the comments make me realize that I haven't been clear enough. My use of "shippy fic" here is not meant to encompass all romantic fic ever. I'm really just talking about my own reading preferences, which are fairly narrow. I have angsty cop partner buttons. Blame it on falling hard for Mulder and Scully in my formative years. I'm completely uninterested in reading pairing-based fic about pairings that don't fall into a particular model, but for the ones that do, I want to read the same kind of fic over and over again. My preferred kind of pairing is not in a canonical romantic relationship, but there's a close friendship and lots of sparkly chemistry. They're attracted to one another but can't/don't act on it for any number of reasons--because they work together, because they're afraid of ruining the friendship, because they've got various issues from other relationships or other things in their lives, etc. If there's a bit of codependency involved, all the better. It's all very cookie-cutter--so much so that Bones can build an entire show around knowingly playing with the tropes--but it's what I like. And with this kind of pairing, I enjoy reading endless versions of predictable shippy post-eps where Mulder and Scully or Elliot and Olivia or Booth and Brennan or Mac and Stella are forced to confront their feelings for each other in the face of mortal peril. And sure, Mulder and Scully are going to do it a little bit differently than Elliot and Olivia, who are going to do it differently than Booth and Brennan, but it's a much smaller difference in degree than, say, Mulder and Scully vs. Lee and Kara (which would be an entirely different kind of fic, and one that I have no qualifications to judge, not having read very much of it). It's not that I enjoy reading OOC fics, but when characters are so canonically similar, there's not a huge range, and I'm willing to handwave a lot more for these kinds of pairings than I am with other genres of fic and other kinds of characters.
So hopefully that makes it clearer. I'm not at all trying to be dismissive of ship fic or people who write it regularly (and am obviously a bit jealous of those of you who write it well--and I think plenty of people do write it very well, bringing together romance and character insight). But my own personal preferences in this matter are actually for the repetition of familiar tropes. I find it comforting, somehow. And it's probably no accident that I strongly gravitate for these kinds of pairings to procedurals, which are themselves based around the comfortable repetition of familiar tropes.
Easier said than done, perhaps. I have written a draft of a fic about Mac and Stella from CSI: NY. In many ways, doing what I've done so far has sufficiently scratched my itch, and I might be happy enough never to post it. It's not like I'm really in touch with the audience for this kind of thing, after all, so I don't exactly expect a large response; I've mostly just done this for myself. Nevertheless, I might as well finish it off and post it. Except I've run into a bit of a conundrum. I got the draft back from the World's Best Beta, gabolange, and among her comments, she mentioned that to a certain extent she felt like she could have swapped out the names and the story, or at least parts of it, would have worked for any number of pairings.
My first thought was, "oh, yeah, I should fix that; the ability to swap out the names is not what one wants in fic, obviously! And I always try to be so particular about characterization." But then I had a second thought: "isn't the interchangeability sort of the point of shippy fic???"
For me, at least, I think it may be. Fluffy ship fic is not my favorite kind of fic to read, but I do get on little binges when I like to read a lot of it. And I'll read the good, the bad, and the ugly (as long as there's at least some evidence that the person is familiar with the use of the comma), but there are certain tropes that work well for me. And I'll read dozens of basically identical stories, for various pairings, and the pleasure in it does not come from characterization but from the replaying of particular tropes. I gravitate to the same sorts of stories for pretty much any pairing I'm interested in reading fluffy fic about. I'm not quite sure what to do with that realization, but there it is.
The problem, however, is that in my favorite kind of fic to read, which is also the kind of fic I ordinarily try to write, I am all about characterization. Characterization, in fact, is the entire point: I write fic (at least most of the time) because I'm trying to figure something out about a character. I think of it more as an analytical process rather than a creative process (though I'd be careful not to draw too fine a distinction between those categories).
At present, however, I find myself at a bit of an impasse. The kind of fluffy ship fic I like to read, the kind I thought I was trying to write in this current Mac/Stella piece, is not just different in genre than the kind of fic I ordinarily write, it is in fact predicated on ideas antithetical to the kind of fic I ordinarily write. And now I'm not quite sure what to do. I mean, chances are good that I will do my best to revise the fic to include more particular characterization, but there comes a point at which all fluffy ship fic, at least for most pairings (an exception would be Booth and Brennan, whose canonical relationship pretty much is fluffy ship fic), strikes me as fundamentally out of character. Is it possible to suspend disbelief about characterization enough to pull off fluffy ship fic, yet also do characterization well enough that you can't just swap out the names with those of another pairing? I know it must be--the best writers of shippy fic can do this, I think. I'm just not at all sure I can pull it off, nor am I entirely sure I want to, if getting too particular about the characterization would interfere with the basic pleasure of the repetitive reading of particular tropes.
It strikes me, though, that I may compartmentalize my fannish activity a lot more than many people do. There are certain kinds of shows and characters about which I feel truly and actively fannish these days, the kinds of shows and characters that make me want to write fic and meta, the kinds that make me really think. And with those, I'm increasingly drawn to gen fic (to read and write), or to really complicated, messy, and angsty pairings. But I still like my candy, which I indulge in in an entirely different set of shows and characters, about which I am not actually inclined to be very fannish. I'll watch with enthusiasm and read lots of mediocre ship fic, but that's that. Until I had to decide to go stretch my writing muscles... ;)
ETA: So the comments make me realize that I haven't been clear enough. My use of "shippy fic" here is not meant to encompass all romantic fic ever. I'm really just talking about my own reading preferences, which are fairly narrow. I have angsty cop partner buttons. Blame it on falling hard for Mulder and Scully in my formative years. I'm completely uninterested in reading pairing-based fic about pairings that don't fall into a particular model, but for the ones that do, I want to read the same kind of fic over and over again. My preferred kind of pairing is not in a canonical romantic relationship, but there's a close friendship and lots of sparkly chemistry. They're attracted to one another but can't/don't act on it for any number of reasons--because they work together, because they're afraid of ruining the friendship, because they've got various issues from other relationships or other things in their lives, etc. If there's a bit of codependency involved, all the better. It's all very cookie-cutter--so much so that Bones can build an entire show around knowingly playing with the tropes--but it's what I like. And with this kind of pairing, I enjoy reading endless versions of predictable shippy post-eps where Mulder and Scully or Elliot and Olivia or Booth and Brennan or Mac and Stella are forced to confront their feelings for each other in the face of mortal peril. And sure, Mulder and Scully are going to do it a little bit differently than Elliot and Olivia, who are going to do it differently than Booth and Brennan, but it's a much smaller difference in degree than, say, Mulder and Scully vs. Lee and Kara (which would be an entirely different kind of fic, and one that I have no qualifications to judge, not having read very much of it). It's not that I enjoy reading OOC fics, but when characters are so canonically similar, there's not a huge range, and I'm willing to handwave a lot more for these kinds of pairings than I am with other genres of fic and other kinds of characters.
So hopefully that makes it clearer. I'm not at all trying to be dismissive of ship fic or people who write it regularly (and am obviously a bit jealous of those of you who write it well--and I think plenty of people do write it very well, bringing together romance and character insight). But my own personal preferences in this matter are actually for the repetition of familiar tropes. I find it comforting, somehow. And it's probably no accident that I strongly gravitate for these kinds of pairings to procedurals, which are themselves based around the comfortable repetition of familiar tropes.