Weaving the Web: Lights! Action! Snark!

[lolmac]

I'm not posting a new chapter this weekend, but I am posting about the novel, so maybe this will patch the gap a bit.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I started writing Spider’s Web with the specific aim of producing something that could be submitted for publication - and would have the best chance I could give it of being accepted. At the time

Comments

[idlewild_]

Gap-filling and exploring the weird rough edges of canon is the most fun part. I think that's why I write in tv fandoms mostly. Television writers get to hand-wave a lot or have to move on quickly from themes we as viewers would love to see developed more. The holes that exist for practical reasons of deadlines and budgets are just fantastic places to dive in to a canon and build beautiful speculative in-universe rationales for.

[lolmac]

I should probably blame Lothi, in fact, for demonstrating the rich possibilities of gap-filling. Phoenix Rising was my first real round of that: "Wow, they sure changed it up between S1 and S2 of MacGyver. What sequence of events might have caused someone to go through that set of major changes in that short a time?"

[jackwabbit]

*iz jealous of anyone who can write action*

Dude, so hard. I hate it with a burning passion. Give me dialogue any freaking day.

[lolmac]

Dialogue's fun too. It's sex that I can't write! I'm so jealous of my partner's gift there!

[thothmes]

Oh, I hear you there. I'm pretty much reduced to "...and then they went off and had a private moment together. Okay, now they're back." with the slightest of window dressing.

I think it's because I try and write, but real bodies with real people attached to them keep getting in the way, and I want to say "Oh, excuse me, Mr. Anderson! You did not just hear me say that about you!"

Somehow when I read the pr0n, it's the characters that are gettin' busy, not the real people

fade to a badly faded black with bleached-out streaks

[lolmac]

real bodies with real people attached to them keep getting in the way

I do better in that area: the characters in my head are played by the same actors, but they're fully capable of wild happy enthusiastic sex lives (although without greased weasels), as long as they're having in-character sex. I'm even willing to enjoy a rosily optimistic view of the quality of the sex -- okay, yes, there are plenty of less-than-exquisite sexual experiences, but I'm choosing to write one in which almost everything goes well, and the human awkwardness is leavening instead of deal-breaking.

But I still have a horrible block about writing it. I can't get the words to work. I actually have a fine time with being not quite explicit, but then I get self-conscious about how I should be able to be entirely explicit, and I can't, so I must be Doin It Rong

[campylobacter]

OOPS.

I should finish reading the rest of Chapter 1 before reading this entry! I'm currently at the Cathedral Moment. :)

[lolmac]

In fact, since the cut says "Spoilers through Chapter Two", you'll want to finish both chapters.

[campylobacter]

I assume the entire novel will be in Jack's PoV, right?

[lolmac]

Nope, not at all. I started out there as an establishment step, and he does get a good chunk of it, but one of the things that drove me nuts about several of the Official Novels was that they tended to reduce the rest of the team to set dressing.

Actually, one of the challenges that slowed me down so much was wrangling the needs of the much larger cast, so that everyone had plenty to do.

[thothmes]

The dropped thread ending seemed to be a favorite in the writer's room at SG-1. Reetou Charlie is one of the most egregious ones, because for all that it enables them to dial the Jack!angst to max, I doubt that anyone watching imagines it ends well. I think you are right that that Charlie doesn't make it either. Mini!Jack was another one. No one with any imagination can think that it works out well for him to be sitting in high school, surrounded by girls his own age that he sees as being Cassie's age, because they ARE, and teachers that he feels are of an age with him. I'm all for women's liberation, but does anyone think that the women of Simarka will just flow seamlessly into equality? We've all wondered just exactly what was the hospital told about Crystal!Jack and all their sensitive, expensive, utterly destroyed electronic equipment, let alone how they explained it all to Sara. Yeah, she's a military wife of a man who had professional secrets, but she took her dead son by the hand, and was told it wasn't him. I don't see

[lolmac]

Wow. Only getting half of a given Trek episode? Yikes!

To some extent, the S1 episodes have to get a special dispensation, on the grounds that they were still figuring out what the hell to do with the show!

It's actually a testament to the amazing nature of the series, that we look at a major dropped thread (such as the Reetou) and think it's out of keeping. We're spoiled -- because the writers and producers picked up and maintained so damned many story threads and plot arcs. This isn't Babylon 5, after all, where a single person had a single long story to tell, and was pacing it out on purpose. They built this amazing plane while it was in the air, and the fact that they only have a few doors going out into empty space is a marvel!

[thothmes]

I think to a great extent that is why we have so many dropped threads. I'd guess that about half of them are "Oh God! We so don't want to have to deal with that!" and the other half are deliberately dropped threads that they put out there as fertile ground for later episodes. Some were picked up (Linnea - Destroyer of Worlds, the Aschen, Hathor loose in the Universe) and some (Reetou Charlie, mini!Jack) were not. I think I remember reading that they wanted to bring Michael Walsh (mini!Jack) back, to have more scenes with the two Jacks, but never got around to it. I'm betting Reetou Charlie was a discussion that went "But we can't kill the kid! Jack's already lost a Charlie. I would be too much!" "Well, how about the Tok'ra take him?" "Yeah, that would work

[lolmac]

I haven't yet seen a mini!Team fic, but I've certainly seen the other variations.

[sidlj]

That's interesting, how you found an undocumented change in the Tok'ra/Tau'ri relationship. I've never noticed, but then I haven't been examining the evidence with intent.

And I've only read one or two of the earliest novels, but I know that in fanfic (specifically the J/D slash variety) of recent years, the setting is nearly always post-Abyss/post-Descension/post-D.C. relocation/post-series. And that makes a lot of sense, since setting the boys up for a HEA in, say, Season 5, means ignoring the fact that they're about to be ripped apart for a year, and then separated by half a continent a couple of years after that.

I wonder what the trend in gen fanfic has been? *muses*

[lolmac]

Oh, I'm sure the actual change was "Since we really liked Carmen Argenziano and we're going to continue to bring his character back, and we need someone to fetch the cavalry in this episode, let's have the Tok'ra do it!" And why not? It was a definite improvement.

I wonder if there's a tendency, now that the series is entirely over (snif!!), to want to wrap things up one way or another. The opportunities for Jossing have ended and any writer still writing for this fandom can settle an OTP however they like. Then, too, the early years feel as if it was a long time ago -- not everyone wants to write ancient history, all the way back to 1997!!