Reading remixes
I like to read the original before I read the remix, because then I feel like I am not missing the point of the remix, or, at least, I am not missing the point of a really great remix.
These are the things that are going on in a really great remix:
1) The remix comments on, complicates, refocuses, argues with, or underlines a part of the original.
2) The remix is a great story in itself.
3) The remix is still a great piece of fanfiction for canon, i.e. it speaks to something in canon as much as (or more than) it speaks to that original story.
I will toot my own horn and say that I think the Whore remix achieves all of those. I think that Athosian Woman (the silver chromatic remix) achieves these three, also. Probably also some other stories of mine which have been remixed, but that's the one I think of off the top of my head.
So, when people say that they don't read the original story at all from a remix, I feel like they are interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. How can you figure out if a story is a good remix if you don't read the original?
This is akin, I think, to reading fanfiction for canons you don't know. This is going and reading a work which has been written for an audience familiar with X body of knowledge, but you don't have that body of knowledge. It's not that you can't get anything from such an exercise, but you are going without getting all that you could be from the exercise.
This is, of course, complicated by all of the fanfiction out there which suffers from severe attenuation from its source. This doesn't have to be any two guys, it can just be really elaborate world building in the fanfiction. And, in remixes, you get the problem of too much fidelity to the original, where it seems as if you are, in fact, reading the original story twice, and, also, too much difference from the original, where the original fic functions more like a story prompt than a source material. I think I have managed to avoid the doubling issue, but I know I've done the story prompt version, with, for instance This Sleepover Thing (Official Subtext Loop).
Maybe I will do reviews of the remixing in Remix Redux 10 later this summer. I like talking about that sort of thing.
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These are the things that are going on in a really great remix:
1) The remix comments on, complicates, refocuses, argues with, or underlines a part of the original.
2) The remix is a great story in itself.
3) The remix is still a great piece of fanfiction for canon, i.e. it speaks to something in canon as much as (or more than) it speaks to that original story.
I will toot my own horn and say that I think the Whore remix achieves all of those. I think that Athosian Woman (the silver chromatic remix) achieves these three, also. Probably also some other stories of mine which have been remixed, but that's the one I think of off the top of my head.
So, when people say that they don't read the original story at all from a remix, I feel like they are interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. How can you figure out if a story is a good remix if you don't read the original?
This is akin, I think, to reading fanfiction for canons you don't know. This is going and reading a work which has been written for an audience familiar with X body of knowledge, but you don't have that body of knowledge. It's not that you can't get anything from such an exercise, but you are going without getting all that you could be from the exercise.
This is, of course, complicated by all of the fanfiction out there which suffers from severe attenuation from its source. This doesn't have to be any two guys, it can just be really elaborate world building in the fanfiction. And, in remixes, you get the problem of too much fidelity to the original, where it seems as if you are, in fact, reading the original story twice, and, also, too much difference from the original, where the original fic functions more like a story prompt than a source material. I think I have managed to avoid the doubling issue, but I know I've done the story prompt version, with, for instance This Sleepover Thing (Official Subtext Loop).
Maybe I will do reviews of the remixing in Remix Redux 10 later this summer. I like talking about that sort of thing.
Original post at Dreamwidth. Read (
) comments or reply there using Open ID.