(no subject)
For allecto and anyone else wanting it: Coolio -- Gangsta's Paradise -- 3.7 mb
The WIP meme is a cruel, cruel thing. Intellectually, I know that reading the stories will only bring long-term suffering, but the rest of me isn't so smart and only sees the tempting summaries, the pairings and the good authors. I'm trying to beat that part of myself down, but I'm not sure I'll manage to, and every new post makes the battle harder.
Related, but less whiny: doesn't it strike anyone else weird that most of these WIPs seem to be AUs? I always thought they'd be easier to write than "regular" stories, since you can do anything you want in them and don't have to abide by canon. But maybe that's what makes it harder? To not have 'external help', things you know you'll have to put in whether you like it or not? I've only ever seen the bad side of it, but maybe it can help some people. Ground them, in a way. I don't know, but I'm very surprised.
Hmm, and actually, I may have to read some of these (at least RPS ones) to see when they take place, because I've noticed that people tend to write stories taking place either in the present, or "back in the day" (say, Germany or before for Popslash, main filming for Lotrips), but almost never in between, epics notwithstanding. People seem to be able to wrap canon around their stories, but not actually fit stories in canon; because recent canon is much less heavier -- since we have no idea what'll happen later on -- it's the default, easiest choice. Early stories are do-able since we (as in fandom, not individuals) weren't around then, and it lasted long enough that the near future in any of them is also unknown. Now that I think about it, though, that's also true of FPS; I remember that after season 5 of Buffy, almost no story, AU or otherwise, didn't include Dawn, because she was now part of that universe and people didn't seem to be able to ignore that. The main difference is probably that the early stories in FPS (usually before the first season) tend to exist only because/for later canon, like Smallville does with Superman with all the aren't-we-clever-references. But in RPS, and I'm mostly thinking about popslash here, they exist outside of canon, a way to play with characterizations and short-timed bunnies.
And here's where I wonder if I'm making any sense, and whether or not I'm completely delusional, because the mad search for canon in RPS -- past and present -- contradicts that theory. Still, even if I'm completely wrong, the fact remains that people mostly write stories taking place recently, and it'd be interesting to see if many AUs are aborted attempts to do otherwise.
The WIP meme is a cruel, cruel thing. Intellectually, I know that reading the stories will only bring long-term suffering, but the rest of me isn't so smart and only sees the tempting summaries, the pairings and the good authors. I'm trying to beat that part of myself down, but I'm not sure I'll manage to, and every new post makes the battle harder.
Related, but less whiny: doesn't it strike anyone else weird that most of these WIPs seem to be AUs? I always thought they'd be easier to write than "regular" stories, since you can do anything you want in them and don't have to abide by canon. But maybe that's what makes it harder? To not have 'external help', things you know you'll have to put in whether you like it or not? I've only ever seen the bad side of it, but maybe it can help some people. Ground them, in a way. I don't know, but I'm very surprised.
Hmm, and actually, I may have to read some of these (at least RPS ones) to see when they take place, because I've noticed that people tend to write stories taking place either in the present, or "back in the day" (say, Germany or before for Popslash, main filming for Lotrips), but almost never in between, epics notwithstanding. People seem to be able to wrap canon around their stories, but not actually fit stories in canon; because recent canon is much less heavier -- since we have no idea what'll happen later on -- it's the default, easiest choice. Early stories are do-able since we (as in fandom, not individuals) weren't around then, and it lasted long enough that the near future in any of them is also unknown. Now that I think about it, though, that's also true of FPS; I remember that after season 5 of Buffy, almost no story, AU or otherwise, didn't include Dawn, because she was now part of that universe and people didn't seem to be able to ignore that. The main difference is probably that the early stories in FPS (usually before the first season) tend to exist only because/for later canon, like Smallville does with Superman with all the aren't-we-clever-references. But in RPS, and I'm mostly thinking about popslash here, they exist outside of canon, a way to play with characterizations and short-timed bunnies.
And here's where I wonder if I'm making any sense, and whether or not I'm completely delusional, because the mad search for canon in RPS -- past and present -- contradicts that theory. Still, even if I'm completely wrong, the fact remains that people mostly write stories taking place recently, and it'd be interesting to see if many AUs are aborted attempts to do otherwise.