Musing over PETS
Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about that fic. It bothers me that I never finished it quite a bit. Part of me still wants to complete the plot - yes I did have a plot. The problem is that I no longer have the interest in exploring the other things I was using PETS to explore.
When I started writing it, I had three basic challenges for myself: To break through my inhibitions and write anything I wanted to. To pair everyone, thus proving that any pairing is possible with enough justification and backstory. And finally to shore up some major, glaring, horrible plotholes concerning the motivations and goals of the badguys in the anime.
Inhibitions: Prior to writing FMA I'd been squeamishly embarrassed about writing smut. I was even rather embarrassed to read it. But being in fandom and seeing that most of the people around me didn't have this problem, it occurred to me that being able to write a sex scene would be a damn useful writing skill, and this was probably the best opportunity to actually see if I could do it.
I did. And to my enormous surprise it was easy. Once I broke through the squick - it was a freaking piece of cake to write a scene just as graphic and dirty as I could imagine.
And that left me wondering, how low could I go? How far could I push my own squickish barriers before I reached the bottom and simply didn't have the writing skills or gut to go any further? The answer was PETS - a fic where I could plausibly play with whatever kinks, whatever violence, whatever situation teased my own inner sense of nausea. It was enormously exciting to write.
And it was easy. Amazingly, ridiculously, gloriously easy.
But then something happened - after a few chapters I realized that I'd done it. I'd surmounted the challenge. I'd succeeded. There was no longer any question of if I could write pretty much anything. I was imaginative enough to follow action and consequence to its horrible conclusion. The question now was should I write it. And that was a much more difficult question. Frankly, people loved PETS, but it also revolted them. And I felt that I'd become something of a cartoon. Did I really want to be FMA's shock-jock? Is that the fandom reputation I was going for?
And more importantly than that, would this get me in trouble? Fandom is ridiculously accepting in general and FMA is even more open than any fandom I've since explored. It's all fiction -- it's all good, so goes the mantra. But take one step outside of fandom and there are some real rules about what's acceptable - and real stigma for breaking them. So long as I flew under the real life radar, no one would ever notice my fandom activities, but what if I should somehow get my real name connected to my fandom name? What if employers, or family, or members of the community I have to interact with should come across this fic? I'd forever be tainted. There are far too many people in the world who believe, firmly, that what one reads and writes is a sign of what they desire. And why not; it makes superficial sense. If I didn't know for a fact that it isn't true, I'd probably believe that myself.
Pairings: One of the things that annoyed me most about fandom was the persistant notion that characters had to go together in a certain way. Like scratching an persistant itch, I found my mind wheeling down all the possibilities of how to make the impossible possible without deviating too far from the original. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I failed. But even when I failed, I generally produced an interesting pairing and situation, even if it wasn't completely IC.
FMA was a great community to do this in. There were dozens of characters, all of which could be put into situations where they would deal with each other emotionally and sexually. I could have 50 chapters and not have written every possibility.
It was an exciting challenge. Each pairing was like a seed to its own little universe. They needed background, a situation to support them. They each reacted differently. They brought their own emotional baggage to the situation. All these possibilities crystallized around them and suddenly I had a story with a plot and emotional punch. My mind would race a thousand miles an hour, discovering how all the little interconnected details fit together into a puzzle that even I couldn't fully predict.
That kept me going for a good long while. But then something happened. The challenge faded. The game got a bit old. At the heart of all these pairings was the goal of porn - and after a while, porn got… boring. I'd written just about every way one set of genitals could be pressed against another. Hell I'd written porn where neither of the participants even had genitals.
And here's the awkward thing: while pairing everyone was a powerful motivator for me, it wasn't particularly something that most of my audience cared for. Most of them just wanted to see their favorite pairings together, and otherwise were reading for the plot. They tolerated that I did the rest because they knew that's what floated my boat. But now it wasn't floating my boat anymore. I was bored and it was a chore, but one I couldn't stop without utterly changing the character of the fic.
Plot holes: Perhaps my biggest impetus to write fic in the FMA universe was to fill in what I saw as utterly glaring plot holes. When things make no logical sense, my mind automatically tries to fill in some reason. When that's impossible, my imagination rewrites things so that it becomes possible. For all the great things about the FMA anime, the bad guys behavior never came close to being rational.
They want to prevent Ed from making the stone - but they want him to - but they don't - but they need it to prevent Dante from rotting - but why now for that and not 400 years ago? How was the philosopher's stone different from redstones? Why only seven homunculi? Why do they flock to Dante? And what the heck was Hoenheim doing?
To answer all these questions I began at the beginning - actually I began before the beginning: I started with the notion that if Hohenheim were so damn important, wouldn't someone show some interest in his kids? If for no other reason, they'd make good hostages. One thing lead to another and I had the plot for PETS.
And that's still what drives me. Following the plot. I'd like to complete it - just, I'm not sure I want to devote the amount of time it would take to write all the porn. A good porn scene takes at minimum 1000 words. And the tone is set so dark and angsty…bah.
So, I'm paralyzed.
When I started writing it, I had three basic challenges for myself: To break through my inhibitions and write anything I wanted to. To pair everyone, thus proving that any pairing is possible with enough justification and backstory. And finally to shore up some major, glaring, horrible plotholes concerning the motivations and goals of the badguys in the anime.
Inhibitions: Prior to writing FMA I'd been squeamishly embarrassed about writing smut. I was even rather embarrassed to read it. But being in fandom and seeing that most of the people around me didn't have this problem, it occurred to me that being able to write a sex scene would be a damn useful writing skill, and this was probably the best opportunity to actually see if I could do it.
I did. And to my enormous surprise it was easy. Once I broke through the squick - it was a freaking piece of cake to write a scene just as graphic and dirty as I could imagine.
And that left me wondering, how low could I go? How far could I push my own squickish barriers before I reached the bottom and simply didn't have the writing skills or gut to go any further? The answer was PETS - a fic where I could plausibly play with whatever kinks, whatever violence, whatever situation teased my own inner sense of nausea. It was enormously exciting to write.
And it was easy. Amazingly, ridiculously, gloriously easy.
But then something happened - after a few chapters I realized that I'd done it. I'd surmounted the challenge. I'd succeeded. There was no longer any question of if I could write pretty much anything. I was imaginative enough to follow action and consequence to its horrible conclusion. The question now was should I write it. And that was a much more difficult question. Frankly, people loved PETS, but it also revolted them. And I felt that I'd become something of a cartoon. Did I really want to be FMA's shock-jock? Is that the fandom reputation I was going for?
And more importantly than that, would this get me in trouble? Fandom is ridiculously accepting in general and FMA is even more open than any fandom I've since explored. It's all fiction -- it's all good, so goes the mantra. But take one step outside of fandom and there are some real rules about what's acceptable - and real stigma for breaking them. So long as I flew under the real life radar, no one would ever notice my fandom activities, but what if I should somehow get my real name connected to my fandom name? What if employers, or family, or members of the community I have to interact with should come across this fic? I'd forever be tainted. There are far too many people in the world who believe, firmly, that what one reads and writes is a sign of what they desire. And why not; it makes superficial sense. If I didn't know for a fact that it isn't true, I'd probably believe that myself.
Pairings: One of the things that annoyed me most about fandom was the persistant notion that characters had to go together in a certain way. Like scratching an persistant itch, I found my mind wheeling down all the possibilities of how to make the impossible possible without deviating too far from the original. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I failed. But even when I failed, I generally produced an interesting pairing and situation, even if it wasn't completely IC.
FMA was a great community to do this in. There were dozens of characters, all of which could be put into situations where they would deal with each other emotionally and sexually. I could have 50 chapters and not have written every possibility.
It was an exciting challenge. Each pairing was like a seed to its own little universe. They needed background, a situation to support them. They each reacted differently. They brought their own emotional baggage to the situation. All these possibilities crystallized around them and suddenly I had a story with a plot and emotional punch. My mind would race a thousand miles an hour, discovering how all the little interconnected details fit together into a puzzle that even I couldn't fully predict.
That kept me going for a good long while. But then something happened. The challenge faded. The game got a bit old. At the heart of all these pairings was the goal of porn - and after a while, porn got… boring. I'd written just about every way one set of genitals could be pressed against another. Hell I'd written porn where neither of the participants even had genitals.
And here's the awkward thing: while pairing everyone was a powerful motivator for me, it wasn't particularly something that most of my audience cared for. Most of them just wanted to see their favorite pairings together, and otherwise were reading for the plot. They tolerated that I did the rest because they knew that's what floated my boat. But now it wasn't floating my boat anymore. I was bored and it was a chore, but one I couldn't stop without utterly changing the character of the fic.
Plot holes: Perhaps my biggest impetus to write fic in the FMA universe was to fill in what I saw as utterly glaring plot holes. When things make no logical sense, my mind automatically tries to fill in some reason. When that's impossible, my imagination rewrites things so that it becomes possible. For all the great things about the FMA anime, the bad guys behavior never came close to being rational.
They want to prevent Ed from making the stone - but they want him to - but they don't - but they need it to prevent Dante from rotting - but why now for that and not 400 years ago? How was the philosopher's stone different from redstones? Why only seven homunculi? Why do they flock to Dante? And what the heck was Hoenheim doing?
To answer all these questions I began at the beginning - actually I began before the beginning: I started with the notion that if Hohenheim were so damn important, wouldn't someone show some interest in his kids? If for no other reason, they'd make good hostages. One thing lead to another and I had the plot for PETS.
And that's still what drives me. Following the plot. I'd like to complete it - just, I'm not sure I want to devote the amount of time it would take to write all the porn. A good porn scene takes at minimum 1000 words. And the tone is set so dark and angsty…bah.
So, I'm paralyzed.