taking things for granted in the shared universes of fanfiction

[cimorene]

i was reading comments by makesmewannadie and stewardess_lotr in telesilla's post here. the original context is the temeraire books, but i want to take it back away from that into fanfiction at large. one of the things that is most interesting to me about the shared world aspect of fanfiction is the amount of background which isn't included in fanfiction simply because it's normal to assume your readers come from the same canon you do. stewardess_lotr said,

"So I think MMWD is on to something when she says it's a genre problem. As slash writers, we have an audience pre-disposed to like and care about our characters. Frankly, I think we are frequently lazy, or perhaps just blind, about our obligation as authors to make our characters interesting and sympathetic, and to put them through a true character arc."

the thing about fanfiction is that we do have that shared universe, so it's not even inappropriate to depend on it; it's proper to assume your reader knows what you know about canon, to draw on your mutual understanding and make references to canon, two things which you can't do in original fiction and which won't be picked up by a reader who isn't famiilar with your canon. that isn't just being lazy, because when you do read a story that treats fanfiction characters as OCs, as if it were original - setting up background and establishing their canonical character traits and relationships as you would have to - that can sometimes come across as condescending or irritating, and can seem a little weird even when it doesn't.

what good fanfiction does is take advantage of the canon you already know without re-dispensing it as if it were the author's invention. and this does leave a hole in the story for the reader who isn't familiar with canon. but you do also get fanfiction which takes too much background for granted - as if the writer takes the romantic or emotional core of the relationship between the romantic leads as a given, as if it, too, is canon which she doesn't have to show the reader. it presumes a reader who is already wholly convinced of the otp, in other words.

sometimes you get fiction that doesn't bother to build up the emotional connection between the leads at all*. those stories are really unsuitable for any audience who aren't positively eager to be convinced and don't need to be talked into believing in the emotional payoff at all. if you aren't building that romantic connection over the course of the story, it won't feel precisely like a romance story. the thing is, the audience is almost always sympathetic, because in slash, we read pairings mostly according to our tastes; but we still want to be convinced; that's what makes the story good! we want to go through the process of creating the emotional connection with the characters. you can have a story that's technically a romance without it - a story whose plot is about two guys realising they're mutually attracted and having sex - with that convincing-you element still missing. the story's left somewhat cold, as if it misses part of the spirit of romance.


*i think aeslis liked "dead chicken romance: the kind you can only enjoy if you were already completely convinced of the pairing when you started to read." the dead chicken thing doesn't really make sense, but insofar as it can be explained, the explanation is this: doing something like a dead chicken is doing it poorly. after all, dead chickens can't do most things very well, because they don't have eyes. or brains.

Comments

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

There's a huge tangle of meta in my head about this while discussion because in addition to reading the Temeraire books, I've been reading a pro story that is a piece of fanfic with the names changed and both experiences have made me think about what I expect from fanfic writers and what I expect from pro writers.

As this is the second day when I've had about three hours of sleep all night, the tangle probably won't see light very soon. Hopefully, I'll be able to come back to your post and say something more intelligent.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, after your mentions lately of that serial-numbers-filed-off fanfiction i've been thinking lately about it - not about seriously trying it, just sort of "what would be necessary if i wanted to change the names here and try to publish this?" in most cases it would require writing in a lot more stuff, if not (preferably) simply rewriting to work more character development and background in. even with rps you have this problem, and even with, for example, an rps fantasy AU - you can't just change the names and have a fantasy story because in an AU, at least, in one that works, you often depend even more on certain shared knowledge of the characters than in canon - there are winks at the reader in all kinds of ways, kind of injokes about canon or fanon clichés and how those might translate through to another universe.

um. i hope you find a way to make that post!