my name is sort of an afterthought. If that makes sense.
It does. It isn't the pseud that bugs me -- I may use one for original stuff myself. It's the anxiety about what happens if my (extremely thin, I suck at anonymity) wall is breached.
I can't imagine that it's hugely less work than the work I do.
It's less, for me anyway. The worldbuilding is done, & I can get away with short stories that only get readers invested because they have a series' worth of backstory behind them.
Some people write series of fannish novels that challenge you for wordcount, but I ain't one of 'em. Even my co-written series (& co-writing, IMO, is vastly easier) didn't come close.
Plus, my editing work is less, because it's done when I say. (I'd guess finding an editor who will be critical enough is less of a problem for you. But I could be wrong.) & I don't have to sell it. But I'd like to put my name on it anyway. Fortunately a consistant pseud has much the same effect.
I don't consider most fanfic to be done with an intent to poke fun, which I generally consider parody to be.
Neither do I. To fit fanfic under that rubric, you have to take a broader definition of parody as transformative use (which I got from a legal essay by Rebecca Tushnet, but seems to be in keeping with the Wind Done Gone case, since no one seems to find that funny.)
so I'm making base assumptions that could be entirely wrong, wrong, wrong.
No, you're right. Humorous fanfic does exist, but it's a small subgenre, & the amount which is poking fun (not just trying to be funny) is smaller.
Ah! Got it. Literary dialogue! The light dawns. I have, in the words of Pratchett, a mental sunrise. Where each particular fandom is a microcosm of the larger literary tradition.
Yes, that's exactly what I was groping for. Though you said it much better.
Part of the reason these work so well, though, is that those works are widely enough known that there's a resonance; the work comes as a revelation that's almost mythic or archetypal in force.
I agree. I do think, though, that at least in my fannish microcosm, that's the way the common source canon feels to us -- that's why it was sufficiently paradigm-changing to organize a major part of our thinking, reading, and writing around.
I'm not going to claim that Joss is Shakespeare, but in my daily life I speak Buffy -- not only the addictive neologisms, but in metaphors drawn from those characters, like my personal myths, & my friends do too. There may not be that resonance to the man on the street, but to our own audience, there is. Much like Nightfall to an SF fan.
It's not a literary dialogue, but a dialogue with our past, with our possible naivete, with what we've bought into at other times.
Ah, I see. That part isn't there in fanfic. (At least my bits. I'm told there's Shakespeare, Austen, & Bible fanfic.)
Fifty years from now, if Buffy were part of the collective cultural psyche, it would be possible -- I think -- to have that same overarching effect.the time for turning that over, for seeing what lies underneath and is relevant to a different generation with different myths and experiences, isn't yet; she's ours.
She is indeed. But do we only want to write about other people's myths? I'm also interested in Jewish stories by Jews, Christian stories by Christians, & wireless networking stories by Cory Doctorow . :) I want to see what myths mean to the people who believe them -- & I want to write what my own mean to me in fiction, because that's how I find out.
I see the later works working because the note of cultural relevance, the shift of perspective, is in part generational.
*nods* That does make sense. I don't think you get that shift in most contemporary fanfic -- you get a much closer perspective, of people who are living with, in, & through these stories as they happen. But I like that too.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 07:10 pm (UTC)It does. It isn't the pseud that bugs me -- I may use one for original stuff myself. It's the anxiety about what happens if my (extremely thin, I suck at anonymity) wall is breached.
I can't imagine that it's hugely less work than the work I do.
It's less, for me anyway. The worldbuilding is done, & I can get away with short stories that only get readers invested because they have a series' worth of backstory behind them.
Some people write series of fannish novels that challenge you for wordcount, but I ain't one of 'em. Even my co-written series (& co-writing, IMO, is vastly easier) didn't come close.
Plus, my editing work is less, because it's done when I say. (I'd guess finding an editor who will be critical enough is less of a problem for you. But I could be wrong.) & I don't have to sell it. But I'd like to put my name on it anyway. Fortunately a consistant pseud has much the same effect.
I don't consider most fanfic to be done with an intent to poke fun, which I generally consider parody to be.
Neither do I. To fit fanfic under that rubric, you have to take a broader definition of parody as transformative use (which I got from a legal essay by Rebecca Tushnet, but seems to be in keeping with the Wind Done Gone case, since no one seems to find that funny.)
so I'm making base assumptions that could be entirely wrong, wrong, wrong.
No, you're right. Humorous fanfic does exist, but it's a small subgenre, & the amount which is poking fun (not just trying to be funny) is smaller.
Ah! Got it. Literary dialogue! The light dawns. I have, in the words of Pratchett, a mental sunrise. Where each particular fandom is a microcosm of the larger literary tradition.
Yes, that's exactly what I was groping for. Though you said it much better.
Part of the reason these work so well, though, is that those works are widely enough known that there's a resonance; the work comes as a revelation that's almost mythic or archetypal in force.
I agree. I do think, though, that at least in my fannish microcosm, that's the way the common source canon feels to us -- that's why it was sufficiently paradigm-changing to organize a major part of our thinking, reading, and writing around.
I'm not going to claim that Joss is Shakespeare, but in my daily life I speak Buffy -- not only the addictive neologisms, but in metaphors drawn from those characters, like my personal myths, & my friends do too. There may not be that resonance to the man on the street, but to our own audience, there is. Much like Nightfall to an SF fan.
It's not a literary dialogue, but a dialogue with our past, with our possible naivete, with what we've bought into at other times.
Ah, I see. That part isn't there in fanfic. (At least my bits. I'm told there's Shakespeare, Austen, & Bible fanfic.)
Fifty years from now, if Buffy were part of the collective cultural psyche, it would be possible -- I think -- to have that same overarching effect.the time for turning that over, for seeing what lies underneath and is relevant to a different generation with different myths and experiences, isn't yet; she's ours.
She is indeed. But do we only want to write about other people's myths? I'm also interested in Jewish stories by Jews, Christian stories by Christians, & wireless networking stories by Cory Doctorow . :) I want to see what myths mean to the people who believe them -- & I want to write what my own mean to me in fiction, because that's how I find out.
I see the later works working because the note of cultural relevance, the shift of perspective, is in part generational.
*nods* That does make sense. I don't think you get that shift in most contemporary fanfic -- you get a much closer perspective, of people who are living with, in, & through these stories as they happen. But I like that too.