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

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought their comments were really interesting, which is why I reported the post to metafandom, in hopes that people would pick that up. It's a really interesting observation.

I hate when people say that depending on your readers knowing X canon thing is laziness. What!? No matter what you're writing, you depend on your readers knowing something. If I'm writing about Americans, I expect people to know the vocabulary of American English, or else look up words they're confused about. If I'm writing a sci-fi story, I can expect my audience to know generic sci-fi terms. Therefore, of course when I am writing a Harry Potter story, I expect people to be familiar with Harry Potter terminology. If you don't, then it's not my fault, and it's not lazy writing on my part, anymore than it's lazy writing if I use a word you're unfamiliar with.

But I'd never considered it in terms of, as she says, being lazy about the characters having a connection. I mean, I often see fic where it's hard to believe because it's an antagonistic pairing, but they've skipped the getting together stage and gone straight to wedded bliss. Fine for shippers, who've read fifty zillion stories about them getting together already, but less fine for people who are going, but uh...they hate each other in canon, what!?

The convincing element, though, that can just as easily be missing in original fiction as well. Look at how many people were dissatisfied with the Harry/Ginny romance in Half-Blood Prince.

But what is it that's missing? (Not necessarily in HBP, but in general when this happens.) Or, what is it that makes a story successful in that regard?

[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.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

sometimes you get fiction that doesn't bother to build up the emotional connection between the leads at all

I think of these as pairing buy-in stories. Because you have to be heavily invested in the pairing already for the story to work, but once you are, it really does. (Oddly, people tend to rec these as pimp-stories; i.e., the stories that will drag people into the fandom. I've come to the conclusion that it's a lot harder to determine what is and isn't a pairing buy-in story if you are invested in the pairing.)

This - not pairing buy-ins, but just general levels of shared knowledge and emotional connection with the character - is one of those things that contributes heavily to the fascination I have with AUs. Because there, you, yes, are dealing with a shared universe, but you've made changes to it. Even if it's a fusion, you can't really count on your audience knowing both fandoms. So I find it fascinating to track what people do and don't explain - like, cofax7 typically avoids explaining anything, AU, fusion, whatever. You'll pick it up as you go along, or you won't, but the story will work anyway. Whereas with, for example, the Reel SGA challenge, it went all over the board, and we saw a lot of examples of how varying degrees of backstory and assumptions about audience knowledge could work (and examples of how they didn't, too).

And fan fiction by writers whose original writing works for me tends to be different than typical FF (not all of it, but some of it); I have a FF litmus test that determines whether or not I'll read a fan writer's original work (actually, I'll generally read it anyway - it's more of a determining my level of anticipation or trepidation thing). It's proven to be fairly accurate, and it works best if you do it on the writer's FF AUs.

...Um. It just occurred to me that I'm hijacking this post, since this isn't what you were talking about, necessarily. But, yeah: I find the shared-world nature of fan fiction, and the effect that has on the writing style and content, to be fascinating. Obviously. It's just, I shouldn't try talking about it while I'm this sick. *makes mental note*