Pros-y Love and Think-y Things...

[byslantedlight]

The best thing about doing something as intensely think-y as my current second-job is that I seem to have woken up wanting to read and think about nothing but Pros and our lads today, and I've not felt like that for aaaages, so yeay! And yeay for a day job where I can... *g* So just to get us started...

Comments

[lukadreaming]

I'd go with Sc_Fossil's definition! Crackfic has to have the absurdity over and above any comedy.

I can't think off the top of my head of anything in Pros which counts as crackfic (examples will occur to me at bizarre times for the rest of the day *g*).

Best example I can think of at the moment is someone in Primeval writing a series where Lester, the boss of the project, has been turned into a dog by evil Helen. The fic is really well done, as the writer has captured Lester's sarky inner voice perfectly. The whole thing is totally absurd but oddly believable as well . . .

[byslantedlight]

I can't think off the top of my head of anything in Pros which counts as crackfic
Hmmn - what about all the examples I listed above, and why don't they count as crackfic, then? Werebudgies and transforming cats seem pretty absurd to me... or maybe it's the definition of absurd that's the question..?

[lukadreaming]

I'm not sure about the unicorn fic as crack, if it's the one I'm thinking of, as I don't remember there being a comedy element to it -- it was more of an off-the-wall AU. I vaguely remember the Murphy as koala one, and that would definitely be crack.

I think if there's absurdity and humour, then it's crack. Without the humour it's either weird AU or bad fic *g*.

[byslantedlight]

So it sounds like you're defining "crackfic" as comedy-where-the-humour-comes-from-the-absurdity-of-the-situation? Rather than an-absurd-fic-that-might-have-comedy-in-it? In which case, presumably "crackfic" is author-defined, because they're almost certainly purposefully writing around those two things. Or do you think you can have crackfic by that definition where the focus is on the lads themselves?

So... might the Cupid fics and Greek God fics be "crackfic", as would the Corgi figurine fic, hmmn, A Weekend By the Lake perhaps? They're all absurd situations and humorous - I wonder if they're as author-driven as I've been thinking as well - I'll show you something whacky rather than wouldn't it be fun if B/D were... D'you know, I don't think they are, I think they're more the latter... there's something about the focus. And maybe it's as much the labelling thing as anything else again - if someone's defined something then it's as if they're telling me to read it in a certain way, and once that's in my head then it's stuck there

[constant_muse]

I really should be working, but I missed this discussion at ci5hq, so here's my bit.

I agree with sc_fossil (so you can skip the rest

[lukadreaming]

I am a bit confused about the crackvan comm, though, because apparently you can rec anything there, doesn't have to be crack!fic.

I think that's crack in a drugs sense -- bringing you your fix *g*.

[byslantedlight]

Hello! I was only at the discussion in chops and chips myself this weekend, so I'm not surprised you didn't see it...

Yeah, I get the "absurd" part of the definition from Sc_fossil as well, it's the steps after that that seem rather fuzzy and interesting to me - like the difference, then, between some AUs and "crackfic" or between the fics I mentioned up above and "crackfic". It seems as though they should be "crackfic" by the "absurd" definition, and yet they're never/rarely acknowledged as such, and I'm wondering why... It makes sense if it's more author-driven than story-driven, cos the authors aren't around to self-define (hmmn, so is "crackfic" author-defined rather than "reader-defined"?), or perhaps those older stories have just been ignored (definitionally - shush, it's a word now! *g*) by those currently writing crackfic

[lukadreaming]

Cat Tales I don't see as crackfic. Some of it is trying to decide on authorial intention -- I reckon she meant CTs to be serious, so therefore I'd categorise it as an AU.

[msmoat]

Crack!fic is still something that confuses me. I do think, from what I've gathered, that intentional humour has to be part of it, along with absurdity. But the story can still, I think, be rooted in the characters--as with anything, a good writer is going to have several levels working at once.

I would argue that Pros has had crackfic all along. It's silly to think that a type of story can only have existed since the term for it was coined.

But I will readily admit that my understanding of any of this is hazy at best!

[byslantedlight]

Yes - what you've just said is all exactly what I'm trying to get at! Because if it is just absurdity and humour, then of course it's been here all along - and yet people talk as if it hasn't been... It could just be the whole we-invented-sex thing, but... I've been thinking there's more to it than that, and especially from chatting to Jaycat and Luka...

I'm getting the impression that there's an element of in-jokiness to it, so that in order to appreciate "crackfic" you almost have to have been there for the joke. Of course a good writer will write a story that words on many levels, but I'm not sure I've seen alot of modern "crackfic" that does that to be honest (maybe just not in Pros) - it's more as if there's an extra layer on top of the fandom-layers that needs to be penetrated... the motivation of the author in writing it, which often seems to have come out of a specific discussion... which is kind of interesting, cos it would make "crackfic" a very "21st century" form in some ways - at least in the speed at which it's

[msmoat]

Ah! But the in-jokeness, complete with absurd situations, has existed all along as well! Look at the Mrs M stories! Or...there was a genderswitch story written by Maiden Wyoming that came directly out of a discussion on the CI5 list. Or several of The Hag's short, absurdist stories came out of discussions--the Pros Sims ones, for instance. So, speed, in-joke, absurdity...it's all been there all along!

(Although, granted, the speed of publication is an internet-era thing. Some of the stories mentioned were zine/circuit-published.)

[byslantedlight]

That's what I've been thinking - I don't know all the Mrs M stories, but I've heard about them (never heard of the Maiden Wyoming one, though to be honest I tend to avoid her fic after Journey West - is it online/ProsLib?)... I must admit that I never felt like I got the Sim stories though - and so there being an intrinsic extra-layer in their background (the original discussion/understanding of Sims) would explain that, and perhaps move them to being called "crackfic" if what's being said above is generally true... Others of the Hag's "absurd" stories seem to hang enough on being focussed on Bodie/Doyle firstly, and the discussion secondly that they still make sense to me (depending on what they are, but I think it's really only her Sims ones that make me eye them sideways...)

Hmmn - so I'm still looking at the focus of the story as the defining aspect of "crackfic" at the moment... When the focus of an absurdly comedic story is the lads, and it can be read and understood for the lads, then it's fic - if an absurdly comedic story

[moth2fic]

I always thought it was fic set in an 'impossible' AU (like elves or unicorns) and I also thought it was based on the telling of tall tales in the pub or round the campfire as in the Irish use of 'crack' but I think I was probably wrong! I have consciously set out to write two crack!fics, one in SGA and one in Sharpe, both having the characters turned into animals by magical/mysterious means. Neither was intended as comedy, though there were comedy moments. Nor was I deliberately trying to be 'whacky' - I enjoyed exploring how the characters would have behaved if the impossible had happened. I entered the Sharpe one for a multifandom crack!fic challenge, which defined the whole thing as based around animals and other strange reincarnations of favourite characters. I remember being impressed by some SGA gingerbread men and some gummi bears in a fandom I've forgotten. So I think - exploring unlikely scenarios with a view to analysing basic character in a seriously strange setting and forcing readers to think outside the box - about sums

[moth2fic]

P.S. Having now read the other comments... (instead of just answering the question) - the SGA gingerbread men was a tragedy set in a mad AU. It made me laugh and cry at the same time. Because really, a deathfic with gingerbread men - but it was real to them. My SGA fic was linked to some by other people and reading those would definitely have enhanced the experience!

I seem to agree mostly with msmoat.

[byslantedlight]

Oh interesting... so there's understanding that's it's craicfic (just for fun) and crackfic (the author must have been on crack to have written it... So maybe it's one of those definitions that mean a hundred things to a hundred different people anyway (as we seemed to find once in a discussion about curtainfic *g*)

In which case we'd be going back to a much looser definition of it in general, and to the idea that the people who said there was no "crackfic" in Pros just hadn't read very widely...

exploring unlikely scenarios with a view to analysing basic character in a seriously strange setting and forcing readers to think outside the box
And that in particular seems to go against what other people are seeing as an intrinsic need for a comedic element in "crackfic", too... which would bring us back to Cat Tales etc from my list above being "crackfic" and even From Here to EternityHmmn - which is more important to "crackfic" in your view - "forcing readers to think outside the box" (due to the absurd situation) or staying true to

[moth2fic]

I think if it wants to call itself fanfic at all the canon characterisation has to be all important - otherwise what's the point? You can't just give random characters names from shows or books and call the result fanfic. But there is also the need to make readers stop and think, which I regard as an underlying serious purpose in crackfic. (That's something that SF does particularly well in both original and fanfic, but not all SF is crack, of course. Most of it isn't.) I think the world/situation in crackfic has perhaps to be so absurd as to be unsustainable in a full length novel. Perhaps absurdity rather than comedy is the basis? It's very often about crazy situations and the mere presence of elves (for example) doesn't make a story crackfic if the world-building is sufficiently well done and everything has inner consistency within the story

[byslantedlight]

I think if it wants to call itself fanfic at all the canon characterisation has to be all important - otherwise what's the point?
Well, quite! But that's just it - for example, no matter how cartoon-like I think S&H is (*ducks*) I really can't see canon-Starsky wanting to shag his car, and I suspect the author of that story can't either - so in that case has it left the realms of fanfic and become original-fic-using-fandom-names? But it's "crackfic", so that's supposed to be okay?

But there is also the need to make readers stop and think, which I regard as an underlying serious purpose in crackfic.
That's interesting, because I tend not to have the impression that various of the "crackfic" around is working on that premise - almost the opposite, as Jaycat suggested up above, that it's distinguishable from what they'd prefer to think of as their "serious" writing - in other words they're treating it very differently to their "serious" writing... I'm wondering if that's something that's varying between groups of writers/fandoms...