Another reason why fanfic is great..
Just something I got thinking about today, probably linked to some of the stuff rahirah's been talking about.
In Ancient Greece, tragedies were always written about people from myth (or known figures, at least, since I suppose you could see Xerxes etc. in Aeschylus' Persians as an exception), which meant that every time your Athenian citizen popped along to the City Dionysia they would have been watching plays of stories they'd been hearing since birth, with characters that pervaded all the other plays on show. (For example, all three of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - the major players that we have - 'did' the Electra story of Orestes returning home and killing Clytaemnestra.)
With that you ended up in a situation where everything anyone ever did or said on stage was affected by what had gone before them. You can't see Odysseus pottering around at Troy without thinking, 'Mate, you're so not getting home any time soon,' because of what happens in Homer. You can't watch Oedipus Tyrannus without knowing how the story ends.
Sound familiar? The only problem with that is that it's really not familiar in our literature and in the stories we generally want to tell. A friend once told me that she didn't like reading the introductions to books before the books themselves, and fair enough; you don't want to spoil the ending, even if you then won't get the good imagery that needs a little hint the first time through - and when something's on the TV, you don't want people telling you what's about to happen. But why does everything have to be so linear? Does Pride and Prejudice have to be about the cheap will-they-won't-they thrills, or is there more to be found on a more leisurely read-through, watching how the they-will evolves, fragmenting and coming back together again?
Of course there is, and obviously there's nothing wrong with getting your thrills first time round and coming back for more, looking then for other thrills in some other novel with some other characters. But you're still always contained to that original novel. We've sort of got rid of the idea of creating something the same, but different, and seeing where that goes.
Apart, of course, from fanfic, which is one of the reasons I think it's so great. If you take your standard shippy fanfic, for example, you're pretty secure in the knowledge that X and Y will get together (and for the sake of example I'm going to take X and Y to be Buffy and Spike in the Buffyverse fandom because, er, that's where I live, folks!), and all you've got otherwise is the question of how that comes about. And with that, lets be honest, there aren't exactly infinite variables. However, in that sort of situation the variables suddenly become very important, and all of a sudden you're exploring things that never really bothered you when the question was simply will-they-won't-they. You have to start asking, for example, whether there actually does have to be some sort of major hurt-comfort-causing situation for Buffy to wake-up and see the William, or whether Giles and the Scoobies do have to (no matter how dubiously) act like bastards to Buffy and/or Spike and make the tables of loyalty turn in response. Does Buffy need to prostrate herself on the floor after Season 6? Does Spike? Are the churning cogs of the great fic-machine in the sky forcing the pair of them into pre-defined roles that are inescapable if they are to actually get together and stay together? Is there a story that has to be followed?
I have no definitive answers to those questions (though I'd love for them all to be 'no'), but it's extremely cool to be able to ask them.
Quinara.
In Ancient Greece, tragedies were always written about people from myth (or known figures, at least, since I suppose you could see Xerxes etc. in Aeschylus' Persians as an exception), which meant that every time your Athenian citizen popped along to the City Dionysia they would have been watching plays of stories they'd been hearing since birth, with characters that pervaded all the other plays on show. (For example, all three of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - the major players that we have - 'did' the Electra story of Orestes returning home and killing Clytaemnestra.)
With that you ended up in a situation where everything anyone ever did or said on stage was affected by what had gone before them. You can't see Odysseus pottering around at Troy without thinking, 'Mate, you're so not getting home any time soon,' because of what happens in Homer. You can't watch Oedipus Tyrannus without knowing how the story ends.
Sound familiar? The only problem with that is that it's really not familiar in our literature and in the stories we generally want to tell. A friend once told me that she didn't like reading the introductions to books before the books themselves, and fair enough; you don't want to spoil the ending, even if you then won't get the good imagery that needs a little hint the first time through - and when something's on the TV, you don't want people telling you what's about to happen. But why does everything have to be so linear? Does Pride and Prejudice have to be about the cheap will-they-won't-they thrills, or is there more to be found on a more leisurely read-through, watching how the they-will evolves, fragmenting and coming back together again?
Of course there is, and obviously there's nothing wrong with getting your thrills first time round and coming back for more, looking then for other thrills in some other novel with some other characters. But you're still always contained to that original novel. We've sort of got rid of the idea of creating something the same, but different, and seeing where that goes.
Apart, of course, from fanfic, which is one of the reasons I think it's so great. If you take your standard shippy fanfic, for example, you're pretty secure in the knowledge that X and Y will get together (and for the sake of example I'm going to take X and Y to be Buffy and Spike in the Buffyverse fandom because, er, that's where I live, folks!), and all you've got otherwise is the question of how that comes about. And with that, lets be honest, there aren't exactly infinite variables. However, in that sort of situation the variables suddenly become very important, and all of a sudden you're exploring things that never really bothered you when the question was simply will-they-won't-they. You have to start asking, for example, whether there actually does have to be some sort of major hurt-comfort-causing situation for Buffy to wake-up and see the William, or whether Giles and the Scoobies do have to (no matter how dubiously) act like bastards to Buffy and/or Spike and make the tables of loyalty turn in response. Does Buffy need to prostrate herself on the floor after Season 6? Does Spike? Are the churning cogs of the great fic-machine in the sky forcing the pair of them into pre-defined roles that are inescapable if they are to actually get together and stay together? Is there a story that has to be followed?
I have no definitive answers to those questions (though I'd love for them all to be 'no'), but it's extremely cool to be able to ask them.
Quinara.