Whose story is it anyway?
Some days I really do think I'm a better fit for fandoms like MCU and Teen Wolf. The emotional payoff from the fics I read has been and continues to be much higher than the fandom I'm writing in, but nothing I wrote and could hope to write will ever come close to what I did and do with my Sam Flynn and Tron. I can only hope to replicate this successfully if/when I make the jump to original fiction.
I was once told that I seem to be more heavily invested in the relationship(s) than the character(s). Of course I would be, why is that a surprise? Sometimes the characters themselves have little to offer so I weave into them more character, backstory, and connections/history/interactions/relationships with other characters. Sometimes the relationship is the reason why the characters are interesting. Sherlock Holmes is interesting. John/Joan Watson is interesting. I just care far more about their relationship with each other. I care about their perceptions of each other, how they move in each other's space, how they can read each other's movements and gestures, how they clash and how they flow. Characters by themselves don't interest me as much as how they interact with their world, the things that occupy it, and the people that inhabit it.
If we're talking specifically about romantic relationship then I'll have to refer to bell hooks (and pack her book for my trip back down to SD later tonight). She is why I have words to put to my love of relationships "in motion". She is the one who pulled in quotes from the works of others and compiled them to help explain her beliefs and observations on the many forms of love.
I can't think of anything more relevant to how I function in fandom than this quote from Fromm's The Art of Loving:
To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other to love forever. A feeling comes and it may go.
Oh, and then there's this by Peck:
The desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
From the fabulous bell hooks herself:
How different things might be if, rather than saying "I think I'm in love," we were saying "I've connected with someone in a way that makes me think I'm on the way to knowing love." Or if instead of saying "I am in love" we said "I am loving" or "I will love." Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language."
I don't really care to tell things. I get bored easily. It's when I show things or am showed things that I care, that I become emotionally invested. If you think I care only about romantic relationship you're sorely mistaken. Given the chance - which is shockingly lacking in several fandoms I've claimed membership with - I'd become just as invested in friendship and family fics. Show me a friendship in action, show me a family's dynamics, show me two characters negotiating and embracing or rejecting a relationship, and I'm yours.
I think this post got away from me. Um.
I think that somewhere along the way I lost sight of the original reason why I chose that tronkinkmeme prompt. I thought I came back to it during last year's SDCC while sitting in that infamous DC Comics panel but I was wrong.
I always say I don't know what I'm writing, which is obviously not true. I alone choose the words to put down on paper - gdoc - and I alone decide which way the story goes. But that doesn't mean everything is intentional. I may hit upon a half-formed idea and stick it in to see where things go, then start panicking when the idea starts snowballing. It's the gift/curse of keeping everything in-character - you can make a guess how a world and its characters will react to a situation but once you start you can't set it on a different path because that'll rip apart continuity. Unless you come up with a makeshift solution you're stuck on the tracks, hurtling along towards a conclusion you're starting to see.
So.
I'm writing the transition scene from Sam at ENCOM to Sam taking Tron back to the Grid. I don't know what happens in between, I haven't thought that far ahead. So I make shit up. Sam has a brief conversation with Alan about the meeting with the other Board members and about Tron. Sam goes home deeply unsettled by the conversation. Sam (and I) have no idea what he'll find when he gets back to the apartment. I have vague ideas about his feels about coming home to someone he loves but I'm already a little tired from Sam not knowing what to make of Tron's decision to not only follow him out of the Grid after kicking him out of it but to also spend the night at the apartment and not go back to the Grid in the morning. So I decide that hey, maybe either Tron figured out how to access Netflix or work the Blu-ray player, or Quorra showed him how to before she left for work, and maybe Sam comes home to find him and Marvin sharing a couch and watching a movie. A totally normal, typical scenario.
So... what movie would he be watching?
I very briefly entertained the idea of having him watch Star Trek V but that's just cruel and also I should probably save it for a later plot point. Then I decided that Sam and Quorra would definitely own copies of Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and decided it would be amusing if Tron was watching CATFA while wearing a Captain America shirt he filched from Sam's closet.
It was amusing until the post-final battle sequence came up and I realized that Tron was not going to take Steve crashing his HYDRA plane into the ice very well.
I can... delete it, I suppose. I can rewrite it so that they never get to that part of the movie. I can replace the movie, although I don't think Thor would be a particularly good choice for Uneventful Movie Nights With Tron. Or I can just have him not watch a movie but instead flick through channels or tinker with the PS3/XBox. I have so many other options that I can implement because I am writing it but the damage is already done and I wouldn't be happy if I decided to do things the easy way by deleting something that shows something about Tron's progress from "whoami" to now.
It's a weird way for me to remember that the prompt that started this hot mess wasn't about Sam helping Tron overcome his guilt. It's about Tron dealing with guilty and Sam helping him overcome it. It may be told from Sam's POV 75-80% of the time and his life may color everything in shades of.... Flynn, but this is still Tron's story and my headcanon of it based on that prompt.
I'm still stuck in a minor rut because I went over twenty days without writing a damn thing before I started this fic and therefore I can't remember how the fuck to write intimacy.
What happens when a character starts changing his definitions about himself? How much of that is influenced by external forces and how much is of his own volition?
Sometimes I wonder if the general lack of TRON AUs is due to the Grid being far more fascinating than anything AU tropes can throw at it. Who cares about everyone-is-human college AUs when there's this infinitely more fascinating Grid, am I right?
What gets lost in the transition from program to human?
I was once told that I seem to be more heavily invested in the relationship(s) than the character(s). Of course I would be, why is that a surprise? Sometimes the characters themselves have little to offer so I weave into them more character, backstory, and connections/history/interactions/relationships with other characters. Sometimes the relationship is the reason why the characters are interesting. Sherlock Holmes is interesting. John/Joan Watson is interesting. I just care far more about their relationship with each other. I care about their perceptions of each other, how they move in each other's space, how they can read each other's movements and gestures, how they clash and how they flow. Characters by themselves don't interest me as much as how they interact with their world, the things that occupy it, and the people that inhabit it.
If we're talking specifically about romantic relationship then I'll have to refer to bell hooks (and pack her book for my trip back down to SD later tonight). She is why I have words to put to my love of relationships "in motion". She is the one who pulled in quotes from the works of others and compiled them to help explain her beliefs and observations on the many forms of love.
I can't think of anything more relevant to how I function in fandom than this quote from Fromm's The Art of Loving:
To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other to love forever. A feeling comes and it may go.
Oh, and then there's this by Peck:
The desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
From the fabulous bell hooks herself:
How different things might be if, rather than saying "I think I'm in love," we were saying "I've connected with someone in a way that makes me think I'm on the way to knowing love." Or if instead of saying "I am in love" we said "I am loving" or "I will love." Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language."
I don't really care to tell things. I get bored easily. It's when I show things or am showed things that I care, that I become emotionally invested. If you think I care only about romantic relationship you're sorely mistaken. Given the chance - which is shockingly lacking in several fandoms I've claimed membership with - I'd become just as invested in friendship and family fics. Show me a friendship in action, show me a family's dynamics, show me two characters negotiating and embracing or rejecting a relationship, and I'm yours.
I think this post got away from me. Um.
I think that somewhere along the way I lost sight of the original reason why I chose that tronkinkmeme prompt. I thought I came back to it during last year's SDCC while sitting in that infamous DC Comics panel but I was wrong.
I always say I don't know what I'm writing, which is obviously not true. I alone choose the words to put down on paper - gdoc - and I alone decide which way the story goes. But that doesn't mean everything is intentional. I may hit upon a half-formed idea and stick it in to see where things go, then start panicking when the idea starts snowballing. It's the gift/curse of keeping everything in-character - you can make a guess how a world and its characters will react to a situation but once you start you can't set it on a different path because that'll rip apart continuity. Unless you come up with a makeshift solution you're stuck on the tracks, hurtling along towards a conclusion you're starting to see.
So.
I'm writing the transition scene from Sam at ENCOM to Sam taking Tron back to the Grid. I don't know what happens in between, I haven't thought that far ahead. So I make shit up. Sam has a brief conversation with Alan about the meeting with the other Board members and about Tron. Sam goes home deeply unsettled by the conversation. Sam (and I) have no idea what he'll find when he gets back to the apartment. I have vague ideas about his feels about coming home to someone he loves but I'm already a little tired from Sam not knowing what to make of Tron's decision to not only follow him out of the Grid after kicking him out of it but to also spend the night at the apartment and not go back to the Grid in the morning. So I decide that hey, maybe either Tron figured out how to access Netflix or work the Blu-ray player, or Quorra showed him how to before she left for work, and maybe Sam comes home to find him and Marvin sharing a couch and watching a movie. A totally normal, typical scenario.
So... what movie would he be watching?
I very briefly entertained the idea of having him watch Star Trek V but that's just cruel and also I should probably save it for a later plot point. Then I decided that Sam and Quorra would definitely own copies of Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and decided it would be amusing if Tron was watching CATFA while wearing a Captain America shirt he filched from Sam's closet.
It was amusing until the post-final battle sequence came up and I realized that Tron was not going to take Steve crashing his HYDRA plane into the ice very well.
I can... delete it, I suppose. I can rewrite it so that they never get to that part of the movie. I can replace the movie, although I don't think Thor would be a particularly good choice for Uneventful Movie Nights With Tron. Or I can just have him not watch a movie but instead flick through channels or tinker with the PS3/XBox. I have so many other options that I can implement because I am writing it but the damage is already done and I wouldn't be happy if I decided to do things the easy way by deleting something that shows something about Tron's progress from "whoami" to now.
It's a weird way for me to remember that the prompt that started this hot mess wasn't about Sam helping Tron overcome his guilt. It's about Tron dealing with guilty and Sam helping him overcome it. It may be told from Sam's POV 75-80% of the time and his life may color everything in shades of.... Flynn, but this is still Tron's story and my headcanon of it based on that prompt.
I'm still stuck in a minor rut because I went over twenty days without writing a damn thing before I started this fic and therefore I can't remember how the fuck to write intimacy.
What happens when a character starts changing his definitions about himself? How much of that is influenced by external forces and how much is of his own volition?
Sometimes I wonder if the general lack of TRON AUs is due to the Grid being far more fascinating than anything AU tropes can throw at it. Who cares about everyone-is-human college AUs when there's this infinitely more fascinating Grid, am I right?
What gets lost in the transition from program to human?