L&R fic rec and self-absorbed meta on structure, &c.

[glossing]

Rec! jadelennox wrote a Love & Rockets/BtVS crossover. It's this human face is just your disguise, Oz and Hopey after WAH and during Wigwam Bam.
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Navel-gazing! I'm editing the last full-blown section of Nice Shirt. It's got me thinking about

Comments

[gwynnega]

These "chapters" are like 900 words long; it's writing in soundbites and cliffhangers, and I can't do that. (If anyone can explain the appeal of these two formats, I'd be really excited and grateful. The people I tend to talk to regularly about fic & writing don't write these.)

In terms of those really short chapters of WIPs, there is a certain practical ease in terms of reading them in the LJ format - i.e., if there's a longish fic I see on my FL, I will probably make a mental note and go back to it when I have time, but if it's a short little installment of a longer work, I'll probably read it then and there as part of reading my friends' page...

[glossing]

I've been wondering if this form is a result of LJ, or, at least, somehow connected with it. Because certainly *long* things have been posted serially in the past on MLs -- Repossession, for all its many problems, is something like 180 chapters, but those are *chapters*, not snippets, if that makes sense? There's a substantial bulk there, while LJ "chapters" are eensy.

Man, I need fresh air. I don't think I've made sense since Saturday at the latest. ;]

[julia_here]

You have nice shiny thoughts, as usual, and I am sleep deprived and otherwise abused by circumstance and incapable of making good responses.

Except to say- I think that it's possible for any form of fic to be all about the emotions; I hope that what I'm writing is more about fear, and friendship, and frustration, and hope than it is about "Two vampires and a bunch of assorted travellers walked on to a ship."

And I am so looking forward to that consumation of story and feeling that you've now promised.

Julia, scraping together a little optimism

[glossing]

it's possible for any form of fic to be all about the emotions
Oh, my. Yes, of course - I can't believe I made it seem like only 'shipfic is. I should have been more specific - it's frequently about the characters' emotions concerning themselves, each other, and the relationship.

My thoughts may be shiny, but I am dead-tired.

I hope your week improves, stat.

[julia_here]

The tired-to-deathness is epidemic today, I think.

Wasn't disagreeing, just extending and expanding.

Some non-ship fic is all about the fighting, the conflict, the intrigue, or the puzzle, and not about the characters emotions; like PWP, it's got to be very good to pique my interest. Ditto profiction; I don't need romance, necessarily, but I prefer Le Guin to Heinlein and Tom Robbins to Stephen King any day.

If that makes any sense.

Julia, in that floating stage of exhaustion

[kindkit]

I think that at the heart of what's bugging you are two conflations that are very common in fandom.

Conflation 1: A happy ending = schmoop.

Conflation 2: A relationship fic = a romance novel.

The first of these, as you know, is a real pet peeve of mine. "Schmoop" as used pejoratively (it isn't always, of course) means gooey, unearned sweetness--two characters who call each other "baby snoogums" all the time. Or who are eternal soulmates destined for one another since the beginning of time. Or some such. It's possible to write two people who are happy together without descending into this kind of nonsense. Good writers, in fanfic and mainstream fic, do it all the time. So I don't think people should be deterred by the "schmoop" straw man. And I think we should all be careful to distinguish between "schmoop" or cheap saccharine happiness, and . . . good, well-written happiness.

The second, like the first, is in my view completely unfair. Romance novels are literally formula fiction--various publishers' lines have quite specific

[glossing]

Excellent clarification on all points. Can I submit my *brain* to you for beta'ing?

gooey, unearned sweetness
Schmoop's so my nemesis. This despite the fact that I'm way more interested lately in mellower, maybe even happier, side of things. I wish my term mellowfic would catch on; I'd feel a whole lot better.

Romance novels are literally formula fiction--various publishers' lines have quite specific guidelines for the kinds of characters and plot that they allow. But not every love story is formulaic.
Remind me to tell you about my inadvertent quest to become a junior editor at Harlequin. Because, yeah, you're absolutely right. Love stories !=formula, let alone romance (though when one is interviewing for such a position? It is best not to do as I did and name Lolita as your favorite book. Just saying). Gaddis' work -- hell, even Dale Peck's -- contain love stories, but they're about as far from romance novels as you can get.

*sigh*
Where are you? I tagged and pinged you. Now I pine.

[julia_here]

I'm most familiar with this kind of thinking in the world of visual arts; I've had long wrangles in group critiques over the false concept that pictures of flowers are inherently less artitic than pictures of buildings, and pictures of people are less intellectually valid than pictures of machinery. It's a very old-fashioned version of Modernism, I think.

Julia, one can be sentimental over death and destruction (see remark above re Heinlein)

[spuzz]

It does have something to do with the structure of livejournal when you are posting chapters of a fic

[glossing]

Mmm, spuzz!babble. *loves*

Whereas something like a mailing list, fully formed, beta'd chapters are the norm with little or no instant, personalized feedback (sorta, mailing lists vary, the extent of your popularity varies.)
Yeah. Yeah. MLs do vary, but the general sense I have (though I've cut the number of lists I actually receive mail from down *radically*) is that fics are more ... finished. Or polished. Or something. LJ encourages more experimentation, and certainly shorter forms (it's a pain the ass to post something longer than 8500 words), all of which is of the good. (Like, drabbles have been around for a long time, but they've really taken off in LJ, and I think there's a relationship there.)

Yet I still obsess over NS's parts and the chapters of CW.

I'm glad the form/content of NS works for you. Obviously it works for me, but it's such an odd beast in comparison to other long series that I got to worrying.

*mwah*

[dolores]

Beer bad. Nice Shirt pretty.

This message is brought to you by dolores and most of a bottle of red wine.

[glossing]

Dol prettier!

*raises a glass of seltzer your way*