Out of Sync
I imagine we're all planning to buy Lance's book, yes? And take our copies with us when we go to see 'Hairspray', right? *plots trip to NYC*
Okay, let's not speculate on the contents.
What I do wonder, though, is this: will Lance's autobiography affect what we write? And if so, how?
Okay, let's not speculate on the contents.
What I do wonder, though, is this: will Lance's autobiography affect what we write? And if so, how?
When Lance came out, there was a revision to canon, because we had new information. One of the changes was that Lance's mother had perforce to undergo a personality transformation - in a lot of older fics she is very cool, understanding and perfectly accepting of Lance's gayness. So, post-coming-out fics are more likely to have a not-accepting Diane Bass. That's one line of fic speculation/characterisation that has more or less been closed down by the fresh canon - does that stop us from writing 'old-style' Diane? Would readers object to it on the grounds that it's out of character?
New canon can also give us fresh points of entry for fic. I did a little story a while ago based on Lance's statement that "Chris finally asked me last summer". I think as fans we look for the lines *behind* what we can see and what we are told happened. So maybe having fresh canon details from Lance will actually give us *more* stuff to write about, or more places where we can say, hmm, yes, but what's the story behind that?
Also... ultimately, how much do we *need* to use canon for our stories? We can write stories based closely on chronological events, which are nonetheless totally our own fannish spin - I'm thinking, for instance, of 'Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder'. We can pick one canon incident and figure out a fannish spin for it. Or we can make canon irrelevant or totally generalised, f'r instance, the multitude of "on the bus" stories with no specific geographical or temporal location. And there are AUs, of course.
In any case we can ignore it, in order to write a pleasing story. See vaudeville's recent 'Callus' story.
Do you think the fic-writer's response to this may vary depending on what's in the book, or will the details be irrelevant to what we as popslashers do next?
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But will the book make a difference to how you write fanfiction?
Well, when Lance came out my perception of him changed a little, because really, we as popslashers don't care if the guy we are writing about is gay or not. We just write them gay. Lance's coming out was great in the way that well, some of those fics where they portraited Lance as gay, came to be true.
To me it doesn't matter much. As I told turps33 once, I ended being disappointed by some people around here who got really mad that you as a fic writer wrote Lance as straight. I don't see the difference. If I could write Lance being gay while we were in the dark about his sexual preferences, now that we DO know his sexual preference, I can still write him straight.
Yes, Lance's coming out affected the whole fandom views about his character in specific, but ALSO the way the other band mates saw this issue (I mean, someone in a boyband being finally gay).
If I read the book and if I find out something useful for a fic, then you could say that the book affected the way I write fanfiction.
What's most interesting about being a pop slasher is that even though you make up all kind of crazy stories around the guys, there is a huge load of info based on real facts. It's a challenge to stretch them or shrink them to your favor when writing. but answering your next question I don't think basing your fic in cannon is always necessary.
For example I remember when I was writing Two Fish for One Trick, I remember I asked Adalisa for some pointers about canon that I would use for one scene.
I really don't remember what I asked exactly but I remember she turned around and told me: "you can't do this, because Lance was in Germany when this happened!" and I was like "look I'm writing about Lance's twin. Big picture please". She just laughed and said, "Well, I guess you could bend the cannon a little bit. Lance has a twin here".
So I strongly believe it's up to the writer to stick to the canon or play with it, until it matches her or his needs for the fic.
Personally, while I'm always up for research, I do think that sometimes -and depending on the fic- writing a fic that goes hand by hand with the canon is a bit boring.
I've encountered fics where the knowledge of canon by the writer is amazing, but it kinda leaves out the element of spontaneity that the fic could have if the writer had risked herself or himself to step off it for a bit.
As you said vaudevilles wrote a beautiful fic, and it's not canon based and it's wonderful. I don't understand why people say that a fic not based on canon is just no good.
To me it's as simple: It's fiction baby, enjoy it.
So yes, I might use some useful stuff off of Lance's book, no doubt about it. It's canon after all and we most probably will have to rewrite a lot of cannon tables as soon as it is sold, but I don't think this has to be taken as a compulsory thing to do.
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Will people like what they read? Will this affect the canon whether they want it or not? Well, I can't say it. I've been here long enough to know that some truths about BSB or Nsync are not really very welcomed among the fans.
For example, I don't know if you hear Joey and Chris's radio show, but Joey said there that Brianna said that Nsync ended because Justin was bored and he didn't want to do the gig anymore. Brianna had overheard a conversation that Joey had with some of his friends and she blurted this piece of information while being at school. Beverly said something similar and she almost got crucified by the fans.
That thing the Joey's kid said, is canon now. The Beverly bit is canon as well, but if you use if for a fic, you are gonna be accused of bashing a character. Anyway, that's stuff said lines above it's the truth, and really it has nothing to do with the fact that I don't like Justin. Personally I think it's incredibly childish to bash a character just because. It's like a no, no. But well, that's just me.
So Maybe, there will be stuff in Lance's book that we don't like, or some others that we will simply adore and twist and bend until it fits our fics. We do stuff like that. Maybe we will disregard the whole thing.
As I said in the last comment I'm more concerned about the amount of people that will read the book.
Because, let's just suppose i don't read the book, right? And then I write a fic where Lance said that he didn't want to come out because he wasn't sure how this bit of info would affect his band mate's careers (as told in the people magazine), but in the book he said he didn't came out partly because of his bandmates and partly because he was ashamed that he acted so straight all this years that he would feel exposed (O.k it's not the best example...), and all my fic is centered in the first thing I read in the people magazine. Maybe some people will tell me that the fic is wrong, because Lance said this and that in the book.
Does that makes my fic less valuable? There lies the question.
It will affect the popslash fandom. If radio shows or little comments affect it, a book will sure flip it upside down.
But that doesn't mean, that everyone will include it in their fics. the only thing we are seeing in NSync fan fics is that a fine line is beginning to appear, when fics were written with Lance being "gay" and with Lance being Gay. It's a personal choice I guess. To me this is just more info.
It's like in paiting: I've got a full box set of watercolors, that doesn't mean I can't use oils. I will if I have too, in the meantime I will have them in the corner of my studio.
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So I think we have a more flexible attitude to canon anyway. Quite a lot of stories are very vaguely set - "on the bus" or "in Europe" with no specifics as to dates or places. Also, the AU stuff is taken as given - I mean, all our fic is sorta AU anyway, even the stuff where "you can't prove it didn't happen"! But there's a lot more AU going on in popslash than in ST:TNG, and indeed, with FPF I was never really interested in AUs, because the *world* is interesting, not just the characters. Whereas, again, with RPF, we can put them into different worlds quite easily.
My own suspicion is that some people may be put off by some of the things we find out from the book. It may seem to close out certain kinds of story - eg, if we get a clear pic of how Lance came to join Nsync, there won't really be a need for more 'in the beginning' stories about his audition. (Which is why I needed to write my version!) But I think your point above is true, too, that we'll probably find things in the book which don't appear to offer a complete explanation, and we'll start picking into those. Should be fun!
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