Pet peeve
I've run across no fewer than three rec sites recently in which the reccer says she's seen nothing, or very little, of a show, and then proceeds to rec a long list of fanfic for that show. This annoys me to no end - in fact, I might go so far as to say it pisses me off, deeply, and almost offends me. I mean, why bother - and where do you find the
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Something can be a pretty good, fair-to-middlin' or excellent piece of fiction without being particularly true to canon. After all, there's no "source text" for a Raymond Carver or Eudora Welty short story. The question of canon fidelity is a separate one. The converse is that something can be very true to canon, but be a simply putrid piece of fiction. And one of the most productive sources of kerfuffles is disagreement about interpretation of a particular canon event, or what Character X is "really like."
Then again, for PotC "canon" is less than three hours. I write in Blakes7, where canon is 52 episodes, and Firefly, where canon is 14 episodes--whereas if any poor bugger is out there writing Coronation Street fics....
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I've thought about that a lot - wrote about it in this comment (was going to just repeat it but didn't feel like it; one day I'll make a post about it).
Typically, though, I used about 5 thousand times more words than you and you said it about 5 thousand times more effectively - pig, bacon, yes.
And one of the most productive sources of kerfuffles is disagreement about interpretation of a particular canon event, or what Character X is "really like."I've decided after thinking about this a lot that for me the issue isn't what the character is "really" like - I think it's possible to get to almost any characterization of almost any character, if you take enough small steps - it's like six degrees of separation ( ... )
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A lot of what I like about fandom is what I identify as girly--as you say in another context, the non-hierarchical structure that puts a high value on cooperation. And, although as a general rule prowriters like fan letters, they usually aren't so big on the concrit.
I think that a really idiosyncratic fanfic characterization is actually *less* like the more conventional fanfic characterization than one plucky, slightly chunky, Manolo-loving chicklit heroine is like another (or taciturn Western hero or tough-streetwise-but-secretly-sentimental private eye).
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Absolutely. I did a post about girly stuff too at some point last year - and the non-hierarchical structure is a big part of it for me.
I think that a really idiosyncratic fanfic characterization is actually *less* like the more conventional fanfic characterization than one plucky, slightly chunky, Manolo-loving chicklit heroine is like another Okay, I thought about this for a while and must admit that I don't think I understand what you're getting at ... that characterizations in fanfic within the same fandom are more varied than characterizations in original genre fic between entirely different worlds/books? Hmmm, that's an interesting point (if indeed that's what you mean) - you'd expect that since fanfic is always about the same characters, characterizations would be more similar rather than less. But perhaps the very fact that the characters and the world are "known" to the reader gives the author freedom to vary characterization without worrying that the reader ( ... )
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Personally, I'll give recs a chance if I know they're from people who can tell good writing from bad writing-- not whether or not they've actually seen the show. Besides, one person's idea of an 'acceptable' characterisation could be another's unacceptably OOC (I know a few people regard cesperanza's Fraser characterisations as a bit wide of canon for their taste), so recs always come with a pinch of salt, regardless.
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Entitled ... well, I suppose people are entitled to do whatever they want - there is the very irrational, childish part of me that wants to say: you can't be part of the club if you don't pay your dues!, but the part of me that (generally) predominates believes, go ahead, make recs, no skin off my back. Though truly, I don't think a person who's never seen any of s3 is able to be a decent arbiter of good F/K fanfiction (as opposed simply to good fiction, or good writing, about which I wrote more in my subsequent post).
But back to my visceral reaction rather than my rational beliefs: people have all different views of what's OOC. But if the reccer has seen source, at least I know she has some basis - whether I agree or not - with her views of characterization, and so though I might not agree with her recs, the fact that she's made them doesn't arouse the same reaction as the same recs would from someone who doesn't know source....
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On the other hand, I try to take it with a grain of salt if I can. There are a lot of people whose recs often seem crack-headed to me, and life's too short for me to stress about them. (Which is not to say that if it pisses you off, you shouldn't just let yourself be pissed off. *G*)
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Anyway, No I get crazed at that, probably more than you do... Maybe its a Virgo thing.
Maybe I'm just an elitist who doesn't like dabblers ;)
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