Eh bien, that makes good sense. But, you know, the problem that was worrying you about AVD never really occurred to me in reading. I too have seen the kind of repeat-along-with-me fics you mention (and usually stopped reading them pretty swiftly), but your, hmm, I shall say 'reverse angle' was intrinsically interesting, and the canon that swam past always seen with that absorbing quality. You also had a story of your own in process (which the repeat-after-me fics often don't, really, I think) that was smoothly meshing with the canonical, so the 'tension' was always there both in the new light on the canonical and in the narrative evolution.
Which was what I meant about canon compliance. The full-blown AU is another matter -- gross deviations from canon like Tel's or mine that show up pretty much ab initio and wrench events onto a new path -- but even with a 'canon compliant' fic like AVD there's the constant reality of the new angle/p-o-v, and a running question about how that will interact with the canonical : as a seamless mesh ; or providing a minor new backlight ; or positing something else that is plausibly concealed in canon ; or whatever.
I do agree about the doubled perspectives and know/don't know balance, though ; and yes, that's a fascinating thing to play with. In a way, though, it was normative before the Romantics or so, because very few stories were 'original' in the modern sense. A significant chunk of Shakespeare's first audiences, frex, would have known the received plots of his plays from the same sources that he knew and used ; the abiding question was what spin he was putting on his version, so that many among the first audiences of King Lear, say, would have been increasingly puzzled and then (IMO) blown away by, first, his complete omission of the death of Lear's queen (which in the sources precipitates his weird and disastrous decision to demit power without actually abdicating) ; and second, by his radical reduction of the role of the King of France (who in the sources returns as leader of the invading army and has much to say). A metaphor I find useful is to think of the variations in the redaction as a kind of syncopation -- without the beat established by the original, no syncopation is detectable ; with it, any syncopation can become of significance.
my blushes could have illuminated a small city So that's what the strange glow in the west was a few nights back ; and there was me suspecting the effects of sunspots, or perhaps a blaze in St Ives ...
Which was what I meant about canon compliance. The full-blown AU is another matter -- gross deviations from canon like Tel's or mine that show up pretty much ab initio and wrench events onto a new path -- but even with a 'canon compliant' fic like AVD there's the constant reality of the new angle/p-o-v, and a running question about how that will interact with the canonical : as a seamless mesh ; or providing a minor new backlight ; or positing something else that is plausibly concealed in canon ; or whatever.
I do agree about the doubled perspectives and know/don't know balance, though ; and yes, that's a fascinating thing to play with. In a way, though, it was normative before the Romantics or so, because very few stories were 'original' in the modern sense. A significant chunk of Shakespeare's first audiences, frex, would have known the received plots of his plays from the same sources that he knew and used ; the abiding question was what spin he was putting on his version, so that many among the first audiences of King Lear, say, would have been increasingly puzzled and then (IMO) blown away by, first, his complete omission of the death of Lear's queen (which in the sources precipitates his weird and disastrous decision to demit power without actually abdicating) ; and second, by his radical reduction of the role of the King of France (who in the sources returns as leader of the invading army and has much to say). A metaphor I find useful is to think of the variations in the redaction as a kind of syncopation -- without the beat established by the original, no syncopation is detectable ; with it, any syncopation can become of significance.
my blushes could have illuminated a small city
So that's what the strange glow in the west was a few nights back ; and there was me suspecting the effects of sunspots, or perhaps a blaze in St Ives ...
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