Random thought of the day: is comic fanfic less interesting than angst?

[teasel]

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

Comments

[teasel]

Thank you for a lovely post! I especially love what you say about your grandfather. He sounds like a great guy! It's wonderful that you can cherish the warm, happy memories of him rather than the sad ones. :)

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.