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 suck, suck, suck at anonymity too. Which is to say, I'm sure people would figure it out if I even tried. And a big Doh! Of course that's an issue -- if I weren't stupid with antihistamines (fully body hives that are really really itchy), I would have probably understood this on the first pass. I'm thinking like a original fic writer. (Is there a fanfic word for that? Or is that word just 'pro'?)
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.
I can't imagine trying to write funny Buffy, although the dialogue always has those overtones; you can't have that kind of wit without some humour, even if it's gallows humour. I'm sure mine had that.
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.
Actually, I finally clued in in one of oyceter's posts and the response to that (mine).
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.
I speak Buffy in daily life as well. Although lately that's been more Firefly, because I really loved that show. Note how I'm not saying Fox Sucks. Much.
Good point. I guess I'm less concerned with the collectible cultural psyche than the individual. For me those works get power from how I felt reading the original and how I've changed, both because of it and since, more than how we as a culture have.
I'm wondering if part of the reason I don't have this resonance is because I was thirty when I first came to Buffy, and it's harder to develop that sense of the mythic at that age; it's easy to develop compulsion and attachment, but for me I can see so much that isn't Buffy in Buffy, so many other sources from other experiences in both reading and popular culture. The latter of which could be considered one of my huge blind points
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.
Oh, I don't think we have to write only other people's myths -- for me, Buffy isn't myth. It's mythic, because of the inverted hero structure, but it's not myth in the sense that I love the show, but don't believe it. At some point, those myths were beliefs, were held as true, and in some cases still are. If that makes sense. Writing about things that aren't mythic isn't a problem either; writing about things that are compelling, I assume, is the driving force behind much of fanfic.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-21 09:35 pm (UTC)I suck, suck, suck at anonymity too. Which is to say, I'm sure people would figure it out if I even tried. And a big Doh! Of course that's an issue -- if I weren't stupid with antihistamines (fully body hives that are really really itchy), I would have probably understood this on the first pass. I'm thinking like a original fic writer. (Is there a fanfic word for that? Or is that word just 'pro'?)
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.
I can't imagine trying to write funny Buffy, although the dialogue always has those overtones; you can't have that kind of wit without some humour, even if it's gallows humour. I'm sure mine had that.
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.
Actually, I finally clued in in one of
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.
I speak Buffy in daily life as well. Although lately that's been more Firefly, because I really loved that show. Note how I'm not saying Fox Sucks. Much.
Good point. I guess I'm less concerned with the collectible cultural psyche than the individual. For me those works get power from how I felt reading the original and how I've changed, both because of it and since, more than how we as a culture have.
I'm wondering if part of the reason I don't have this resonance is because I was thirty when I first came to Buffy, and it's harder to develop that sense of the mythic at that age; it's easy to develop compulsion and attachment, but for me I can see so much that isn't Buffy in Buffy, so many other sources from other experiences in both reading and popular culture. The latter of which could be considered one of my huge blind points
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.
Oh, I don't think we have to write only other people's myths -- for me, Buffy isn't myth. It's mythic, because of the inverted hero structure, but it's not myth in the sense that I love the show, but don't believe it. At some point, those myths were beliefs, were held as true, and in some cases still are. If that makes sense. Writing about things that aren't mythic isn't a problem either; writing about things that are compelling, I assume, is the driving force behind much of fanfic.