Comments | alixtii: Meta: Crossovers, Play, and "Serious" Literature

alixtii

Meta: Crossovers, Play, and "Serious" Literature

Oct 06, 2006 00:52

cereta, one of the many fabulously brilliant producers of meta whom I've friended recently, has posted a mea culpa of sorts to her controversial (at least on my flist) essay The Ten Commandments of Crossovers:[. . .] I can't deny that this play was making a lot of people very happy, and I didn't see that it was my place to piss on their Cheerios by ( Read more... )

crossover, dc comics, buffy, meta, west wing, on writing, will-to-poweriness

Comments 7

likeadeuce October 6 2006, 02:18:06 UTC

Just because you're having fun doesn't mean . . that one is writing a good story, but if one isn't? One might write a good story, a technically perfect one, a remarkable product of craft, but never a great one.

Ohh, I really like this (and btw, my caveat to "if you're having fun, you're not doing it wrong" was "that doesn't mean you're doing it WELL, but you're not doing it WRONG" -- and was talking about process, specifically).

But, yes, I like your observation here because -- to paraphrase Mal Reynolds -- if you try to write a story you don't love, "she will shake you off."

alixtii October 6 2006, 02:36:01 UTC

This post was totally a lot more fun to write than the version I posted in cereta's journal (and even then it required two comments); here I got to put in in-jokes and digressions and asides to flisters and whatnot, including that passage. (Also the tone seemed out of place there, but fits perfectly in my own journal, where pontificating is always the order of the day.)

wisdomeagle October 6 2006, 03:39:13 UTC

Well, let's see. (Just for kicks, and with all respect for cereta, whom I don't even know except in passing.

Commandment #1 I violate every time I sit down to write anything.

#2 I didn't break in the fic in question, but only because I'm not sure which canon I'm less familiar with -- the tv show I haven't seen in a decade, or the fictional-real person I made up in my head out of an "about the author" paragraph.

#3 I think I kept! (Reciting of mighty deeds comes perilously close to this thing you call "plot," which takes screentime away from angst and/or porn.

#4.... heee.

#5, likewise.

#6... but it is my life's work to write every conceivably possible girlslash pairing in the multiverse. I have a higher calling, here!

#7, likewise.

#8 is not notably broken in "Go-Round," but I am sure I have written more than my share of coincidence-based crossover fic.

#9. Um. I can only recall doing this once, unless you count stealing Farscape wormholes to do all my heavy-duty crossover work. Only that probably falls into commandment #5 ( ... )

alixtii May 10 2007, 10:59:08 UTC

If people are related, they're less likely to have sex with each other.

But so much more fun for the reader when they do!

copracat October 6 2006, 13:44:54 UTC

I don't see how you make the jump from 'serious' to 'real literature'. I understood 'serious' to mean a serious attempt on the part of the writer to make the two universes make sense to each other and mesh smoothly. It could still be rubbish writing, even with the best intention and hard work of the writer. Something more playful, such as pentapus's well written and criminally brief stories about Methos in the Pegasus Galaxy don't try to make sense of it at all, don't set up much in the way of backstory, they just smush Methos into SGA and draw out the amusing things that such a contradiction entails.

Though two SF shows are not such a good example, and I should disclaim that I don't subscribe to cereta's original essay and I have friends who quite seriously study play who would describe everything we do as media fans as play.

beccaelizabeth October 6 2006, 15:15:28 UTC

Actually, my stance tends to be that any text can be improved by the judicious insertion of vampires

will soon be doing reading for my English degree
shall try to bear this technique in mind ;)

tacky_tramp October 6 2006, 21:43:38 UTC

Yes. Many, many, many yesses.

It seems like those Ten Commandments could easily be summarized as, "Thou Shalt Not Write Implausibly." cereta identifies ten kinds of crossovers that are difficult to write and keep believable, which is all well and good -- but instead of enumerating their pitfalls and offering advice for how to take ideas like that and make them work, which I firmly believe and you have clearly demonstrated can be done, she forbids them out of hand. Not showing much faith in fanficcers, is she ( ... )