Random thought of the day: is comic fanfic less interesting than angst?
There's a terrific children's book by James Thurber called The Thirteen Clocks, unfortunately now long out of print, which includes among its many wonders a character whose tears turn into jewels. A useful and valuable trait, and one that would make the production of angst fics such a vital contribution to the gross national product that fanfic
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I'm saying that for me, personally, as a writer, I just feel I've done less when I've written comedy than when I've dived into the Dark Pit of Angst and emerged trailing weeping readers in my wake. And I'm kind of wondering why this should be the case.
I have had comments on both sides of the fence on this subject. ‘I love your angst but your humour always makes me laugh,’ is, of course, a polite way of someone telling me that I should stick to what I do best and, in their opinion, humour is what I do best. But I also get, ‘This is funny but I don’t know why you waste your time on it when your angst is so good.’ And you know what? The first never even gives me pause but the last never fails to piss me off.
Yes, I will admit that I don’t work as hard on humour as I do on angst. It doesn’t take as much out of me, I don’t worry over whether the use of a single word will change the whole meaning of an entire paragraph, I don’t angst myself out by worrying over whether my favorite Fic Goddesses will give it a glance and if they do, will they like it. In short, humour comes easily to me - my humour is me - and luckily, there are those out there who enjoy reading what I have to offer. And I get a very different kind of smile when I receive feedback on a humour fic, as opposed to feedback on an angst fic. Why? Because I enjoy writing the humour - it’s fun and it tickles me that someone else can get a little bit of fun as a byproduct of my own fun.
But being easier does not, at least in my case, make it any less important to me. I don’t consider my humour fics to be the red-headed stepchildren and the angst to be the crown jewels. In fact, I think, if I had to pick a favorite fic of my own, I would choose ‘Interlude’ in which angst and humour and sex were all blended together. If I had to pick a favorite of yours, I would choose ‘Hobbits On Ice,’ which managed to convey a very deep love within a triangle of beloved characters and in a very light, very fun and unexpected setting. It’s the juxtaposition that calls to me. It’s the contrast that resonates.
Laughter, to me, is vital and we can only appreciate ‘deep and touching’ if we at least have a nodding acquaintance with ‘light and funny.’ When I think of my beloved grandfather, who passed away almost seven years ago, I don’t remember him staring out the window and brooding, or his face crumpling in despair when I was witness to him being told his second-eldest had been killed in Vietnam, or the gaunt shadow of the man he was that he had become in his last year of struggling to hold to the life he loved so much.
TBC...
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I think of him laughing that rolling, throaty laugh that never failed to make those around him join in. I think of him swearing colorfully at the birds that used his just-waxed car for target practice and then the surprise on his face when he turned to see me giggling at him. I think of him trying out his latest Polish joke on my very Polish grandmother and tweaking the feigned scowl from her face with a cheeky grin and a peck on the nose.
These are the things that are important to me, these are the things that I burn into my memory. They are the first things that pop into my mind when someone says the word ‘grandfather’ and they always, always make me smile fondly in remembrance. More importantly, I am convinced that these are the things he would want me to remember.
I think, for the most part, my angst fics are better-written than my humour fics. I think they have more profound messages, they have deeper character studies, I am more careful with a turn-of-phrase and more conscious of the flow of prose. With humour? I want the laugh - pure and simple. Does that make the angst fics better? No, I don’t think so. They’re probably structured better, the grammar is probably more proper, the characters are probably more ‘in character.’ But I don’t necessarily think that makes for better fic. It makes for different fic but I don’t think being ‘different’ should relegate humour to being ‘less,’ just by virtue of its difference.
I don’t agree that humour does not last. I don’t agree that tears of sorrow are somehow more worthy than tears of laughter. Each has its own place and its own purpose and I don’t think one can or should be considered more important than the other, or we risk losing perspective on the joys and sorrows of life itself. Lessons can be learned from both and it only depends on the individual what lessons he or she chooses to extract and how he or she will allow that lesson to impact his or her own life. Me? I choose to take the chuckles with me and give back what I can.
And on a personal level - I’ve never had anyone quote to me from memory a line from any of my angst fics but I’ve had plenty of one-liners from my humour fics lobbed at me at unexpected moments and you know what? It’s always accompanied by laughter. I’d rather that than tears any day.
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I’ve never had anyone quote to me from memory a line from any of my angst fics but I’ve had plenty of one-liners from my humour fics lobbed at me at unexpected moments
I've also found that quick humor fics sometimes get a more immediate reaction than angst fics do -- and since for me, as for you, humor is much easier to write, this sometimes is a bit puzzling to me. So, are you wasting your time putting all that effort into the angst? Well, no. First -- one of the interesting things about this thread is the diversity of people's response, both as writers and as readers, to comedy and angst. Most people have quite rightly reminded me that the two are best when mixed, and that life or fic without one or the other would be poor indeed. Second, however: most people seem to have a temperamental inclination one way or another. You and I are humor mavens, but elwen, for example, reports that angst seems just as instinctive a mode for her as humor is for us. So I imagine there can be a big difference between how writers perceive their work and how readers perceive it. Maybe the things that seem easy are things we should really be doing. If my muse is the Muse of Pratfalls, perhaps I should just relax and follow her on the long easy slide along a banana peel.
Finally: while humor fanfics do get a quick response, and can seem to get more of a response than angst or drama, I don't think that's the last thing we can say about what readers really think of humor. Several posters have mentioned that comedy seems to them more ephemeral than angst or drama, and so perhaps it's the case with some that an angst fic will have a more powerful and lasting effect. (Let me hasten to say that other people, fyrdrakken, for example, say they find humor much more memorable than angst -- almost certainly different readers value different things here. I don't want to put all readers into the same box.)
I would however like to at least entertain the idea that feedback alone isn't a very good indicator of the relative value readers accord to angst and humor. Humor may get more feedback, but that could be simply because it's easier to comment on --- you can simply say something like "OMG that's so funny, I laughed until I choked!" In LotR at least people seem to feel obliged to say more about angst -- particularly when we're not really talking about cheap angst but a complex drama with angsty elements, like your fics. Such dramas, furthermore, don't rely for their effects on single lines in the way that humor fics do, which may account for the way readers remember lines from your humor fics but not from your angst fics.
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