in a very blue moon

[ailis_fictive]

This is not the Big Intro post. (I'm procrastinating.) This is Random Thoughts.

Speaking of procrastinating, I'm putting off finishing The Queen of Attolia because I don't want it to be done. And I'm kind of hating everyone I know who didn't sit me down and tell me to Read This Dammit. I've read three-volume epics that didn't pack as much Good Stuff in as this little 250-page YA book. I have The King of Attolia on a shelf looking reproachfully at me, and I'm almost scared to start it. For QoA I was rather thoroughly spoiled, and have actually read most of the rest of the pages, just not in order. (A book has to get me really worked up to make me do that...) For KoA...I know the basic plot-motif, but none of the actual plot or the end.

But what I actually wanted to say was...I came (finally) to this series after being reminded by a Vokosigan crossover. And in my head, the minister of war is Aral Vorkosigan. Just is. I've no idea what he's doing there, or, contrarily, how he ended up on Barrayar later, but...same person. (And now I really want Eddis and Gregor to sit down and have a natter. Though I'm not sure Gregor and Attolia would do as well. Or possibly they'd do even better, and I'm just scared to bend my brain that way.)

Second random thought of the day, pulled over from a comment else-journal and refined a bit. Even though I'm still not writing the essay. Though I may go hunt up some of the academic work out there on fanfiction.

One of the things I find really fascinating about fanfic is that we can tell the same story--not just the same core theme/idea ("becoming a parent changes your relationship with the future") but the same basic plot with the same characters ("Gregor learns the truth about the Escobar invasion")--in many different ways. It becomes a prism, light coming through in different ways, reflecting and refracting. As soon as I hit that image, though, I was reminded of the way I describe Criminal Minds--it's a fugue on certain themes, hung on an episodic crime drama. They repeat and reverse and refine a set of themes about good and evil, about survival and recovery. There's a little more variation in the actual storytelling but...not much. Now I wonder if *really good* episodic TV (and crime series, both TV and book, since they have *such* a defined structure) aren't doing something very close. Of course, any sufficiently large body of work by a single author will usually start to show something similar--we all have our elephants--but there is something different--and, I think, richer--about multiple people telling the same story.

I'm starting to get really interested in looking at the various fandoms I've read extensively in and brushed against, and figuring out what stories tend to...ah, develop the largest prism, and isn't that metaphor becoming unwieldy? But...there are stories that get told once or twice, and then there are the ones we converge on.

And I'm stopping now, or this will turn into that essay I'm not writing. Or possibly a thesis.

(and, post scriptum, if you happen on this or any post of mine months or years from when it's posted, feel free to comment anyway. I'm happy to get blast-from-the-past commentary!)

Comments

[hedda62]

I would have posted an answer to this sooner, but I was busy writing a sex scene in a "Lewis" story, the one where Our Heroes decide that they really are for each other, after six seasons of putting off declarations and feeling insecure (or five seasons or four or occasionally right after "Life Born of Fire"). I have, in fact, written this story before, and so have a whole lot of other people, repeatedly. Not that other stories don't get told in that archive, but it's a great case study for what happens when a lot of people see a pairing that isn't ever going to get shown on the screen (although clearly some of the writers and at least one of the actors have some investment in the concept), and we really really want to Tell The Story.

Frankly it's a lot more interesting when the story-told-over is "Gregor (or Miles) finds out about Escobar" or "Aral uses feudalism for the good of Barrayar and Cordelia challenges him" or "Helen Natalia Vorkosigan turns out to be a rabble-rouser" or even "Simon, in love with Aral, what are we going to do about that?" Probably because, though this is somewhat contrary to logic, it's a broader world for not being our real one, and it has so many corners and angles, and the rules are so rigid and yet can be flexed so many ways. You'd think within that everyone would find a totally different story to tell, but yes, we do keep coming back to the same ones. In some cases I think because we get set up by the author - the next generation finding out what went down at Escobar is the obvious one. In some cases it's more like an infectious disease passed around the fandom.

I like this way of approaching the issue; I'd been thinking on a more micro-level about what makes fic clusters among small numbers of participants, who pick up each other's questions and answer them, and reuse little motifs: for example, the reportedly off-hand way that Philomytha decided in AVD that Simon was born in a cold climate, which Raven then used beautifully in "the winters here are cold, and bitter" and I picked up (not quite remembering where it was from) and played with in "the heart is hard to translate."

On a not unrelated note and harking back to the first paragraph of this lengthy reply, it would be interesting to compare the stories that explore Aral and Simon's relationship, both the ones that incorporate a sexual attraction and those that don't, and see if the themes resonate similarly (although this might be unfair, since P. has written so much of that pairing, and her themes are assuredly consistent). Or Miles/Gregor, if that made a better study. I like that this fandom is not slash-obsessed, but it does connect itself to the larger fandom world in this and in a number of other ways. Or maybe I'm just a little preoccupied at the moment (again, see first paragraph).

(I have read The Queen of Attolia. I really need to get to the other books. Maybe while the winter is being cold and bitter, if we get that this year.)

[ailis_fictive]

[re-post to thread correctly. Argh]

...there should be an inarticulate noise here, but it's not coming across on the keyboard very well...

I have more scattered thoughts than an actual coherent reply, but here goes. (You seem to have an excellent start on the essay-I'm-not-writing, by the way, and I really like adding in the small idea-clusters--which I want to link to the way that certain shots or images, say, will crop up over and over again in a TV show, echoing on each other. Though this is certainly thinking about moving from essay towards PhD thesis, or possibly Life's Work.)

On a second-or-third reading, the phrase "story-told-over" jumped out, flashed a couple of times, and then pointed over towards mythology. I haven't done nearly enough work on comparative mythology and oral culture to even start this discussion, but..there's something there, about communal stories and communal story-making, and I rather want to start building an argument that fanfic is reaching back towards that. (Which wanders over into communal versus dictated story, and modern mythologies, and now we are totally in PhD territory.)

There's also something I haven't quite gotten my head all the way 'round yet, about the...breadth of the story. This might be me and my limited tolerance for romance (I've gotten better!) but I think...any story that is moving towards two characters getting together has a fairly constrained plot structure. Not just the end point but so many of the beats are dictated or at least strongly suggested. Again, I'm not sure I'm the one to be making this argument, because I *don't understand* romance novels. Oh, I will read them occupationally, when one comes highly recommended, because I try to appreciate good writing where I find it, and I've been reading urban fantasy since waaay back, which means I get a fair chunk of romance along with my fantasy--but there's usually a bright line for me between romance in service to the plot and plot in service to the romance, and I like the one and don't like the other.

Which--sorry to be so digressive--ties back into the kind of stories we tell. I think there's something to look at in romance versus mystery (as genres) as a parallel to a fic-verse dominated by ship-fic* versus a fic-verse that's more open. When the story-told-over is "Gregor (or Miles) finds out about Escobar"...you have an idea, a single transition, from not-knowing to knowing, rather than a story-shape--it's a fixed point, but where you start, where you travel, where you end...those are very open. When it's "Lewis and Hathaway decide they belong together" you have more of the shape of the story. It's still, I suppose, a single transition, from not-together to together, but there's a lot more baggage carried along by transition.

I do feel kind of like the blind man trying to describe an elephant, here, because there are only two fandoms of any size with which I'd claim a reasonable familiarity with the breadth and preoccupations of the fan-verse. (Vorkosigan and Merlin. I've read some Harry Potter over the years too, but I'm not sure it's possible, at this point to get an overall grasp there...) "And they live happily ever" also is not the story I tell--never has been, even years ago when I was writing** in my own worlds. The slash story that I've just finished is...well, a fanfic for a TV show that exists only in a fanfic, and the two pairings are...well, one is ongoing, one is a one-off encounter implied to be not without precedent, and both are seriously messed up.*** The Aral/Simon is...well, canon-compliant Aral/Simon, which says it all.

(On a side note here, I'm running into one of my usual problems, which is that as soon as I start setting out categories I immediately notice that we're on a continuum and start seeing the things that occupy the middle ground...)

I seem to have ambled to something of a stop here, but I do want to note all the love for "like an infectious disease passed around the fandom." And while canon sets us up, we don't always take the openings canon gives us...and yanno, I had a great example this morning and now I can't remember it. Faugh. Something in _Memory_, I think...

And I do look forward to your Lewis piece. Soon I *will* get back my re-watch. Soon. And then I will try not to read All The Fic.

*if you can clarify my terminology, please do! I've read a bit of theory and meta, but if there's a better vocabulary here, I don't know it!

**short version of the intro post, since it just became relevant; I'm mid-thrties, geek since childhood, wrote fanfic and original fiction from 8 to about 22, then my ability to write fiction of any sort--to hold a story in my head and move it to paper--went away. Eight weeks ago, it came back. With a vengeance.

***I've been warning my betas for a dub-con blowjob and BDSM that is clearly consensual but not safe or sane. And am still very weirded out by the fact that the sex was hard to write but the really screwed-up relationship wasn't.

[hedda62]

the way that certain shots or images, say, will crop up over and over again in a TV show

Or the way that TV shows do clever takes on classic movies (or TV shows), like (to use two "Person of Interest" examples since they're in my head) a long pan down a bank of mainframe computers that's much like the end of "Citizen Kane" or the referential scene in "Indiana Jones," or a gunfight set on a carousel a la "Third Man," a genre self-referencing that ends up being not quite so much like the communal holding and retelling of myths as like the use of quotations from Shakespeare, sometimes in and sometimes slightly out of context. I think fanfic does this too (I mean, it quotes from Shakespeare if I'm writing it, but more along the lines of being self-referential), but it also does the full-out mythology retelling-and-shifting.

But yeah, it is a PhD thesis. And I'm sure a number of people are out there writing those, but of course they all watch different shows or read different books than we do!

I agree with the whole plot-in-service-of-romance thing, generally, although it is always hard to compare specific examples. The Vorkosigan novels are such a sweeping saga with such a lot of plot that even if you just want to write romance, and you have any kind of duty to context at all, you're going to end up with a chunk of plot hanging on the romance anyway, even if it isn't actually in your story. Whereas Lewis is sadly episodic (I wish they would manage an overarching plot and continual snippets of backstory and such, but they don't) so whether you write a casefic or a character study or a domestic interlude, if you want to do romance that's where the focus will be; there's nothing else to grab. No matter how compelling a plot you come up with, it's going to feel like this week's episode or something that went on backstage of that.

Canon dictates form; form follows function; something like that. :)

I do like romance, too. I just sometimes feel like "so? Is that all there is?"

[hedda62]

Oh, and ha - I have to share that a brave Lewis writer has been reading my thoughts and has just posted here the story where they don't get together, where Hathaway wants and can't have. It is brilliant and I am so glad it's been written and most people will comment "so sad, oh why can't it work out, can I bribe you to change the ending." But again, context, because it's all about how love and loyalty are not enough. Aral and Simon in reverse with completely different baggage.

[ailis_fictive]

Oh, ha! I have it open in another tab to read tonight. (And then I will, I hope, comment happily against the prevailing opinion.)

Baggage, yeah. I have had a line in my head for...must be a decade now, and I don't know if it wants to be in a story or a poem or a title or a song or what!

"These are the things we carry. These are the things we leave behind."

Baggage.

[hedda62]

Hurray, and yep, haven't looked at the comments recently, but there was already the one saying "Beautifully done and I am never going to read it again" from the same person who said that to me on my post-LBoF story. I do want to say "Woman up!" but everyone is entitled to approach fiction in their own way, of course.

[ailis_fictive]

I read, and liked, and commented.

But, in the perverse nature of such things, what it mostly did was show me the story I actually *want* to see, which was that one up to about 2/3rds of the way through--when it doesn't work, but it ruin everything, and they don't fall apart. (I may have said to the screen "Lewis, don't be an IDIOT!") They learn to work around the break, and find a new balance. That may of course say as much about some of my own history (been there. Or at least somwhere in the near neighborhood. Have the t-shirt, took the hit, lost some things and kept others and just kept on) as about my take on the show, of course.

And no, I can't write it. Combination of too close (the story in my history bending out of shape the one in my head) and too far away--I don't, in general, do much with visual fandoms. I'm a reader. I only react in...writery ways to words on the page--and I have trouble with getting voice from screen to page. I'm perfectly happy with Hathaway (I've met him. Hell, I've *been* him, aside from the British, policeman, male, and religious angles...you know, superficial stuff...) but their relationship is a little more ambiguous to me, and...I like watching Lewis. But there's no way I could write him.

[philomytha]

Ha, I thought I was the only one who couldn't *do* visual fandoms! Words on a page are what my brain responds to, as you say. Though I can get to a visual fandom by reading a lot of fic for it, which helps create the characters and world as words in my head. But I don't find it easy or natural to translate pictures into words, somehow.

[ailis_fictive]

Oh, me too, absolutely.

One of the reasons the story I just finished was so hard to write was...I was working from a (small) written description of an imaginary visual fandom. And the characters came in written forms, shapes--graspable, which is why I started writing them. But the world and a lot of the action felt closer to a visual fandom--that is, to the imaginary show my source was describing--and I struggled mightily with it. (And with a number of other things; I've just spent two days and a lot of words going back and forth with my first beta reader, and...it's better, but I'm still not sure where I am on the line between "doesn't work at all" and "doesn't work for this reader" with some of the things I'm trying to do. Or, I suppose, how much it matters; this is as 5000-word episode tag for an imaginary fandom that was supposed to be an excuse for Teh Sex and somehow developed a story-shape and a lot of other things going on around (and in) the smut.)

[ailis_fictive]

1) Stupid typo correction: 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence, is missing a "doesn't" before "ruin everything." Argh.

2) Sometimes I'm fairly self-aware. Sometimes I'm smart like rock. I typed the above, shut my computer down so I could acutally eat during my nominal "lunch" break, and about halfway through my burrito realized...

The Simon/Aral story I'm working on has about a 3/4 overlap with the Lewis/Hathaway story I described, after accounting for genre and world differences. I've moved S/A...far enough away from the blast zone of my own history to keep it from skewing the story, but...apparently "Some things can't work out, and you find the way to keep on going" is one of the stories I tell. Oh. Thank you, brain. Could you have waited until my life settled down a bit before springing that gem on me?)

[hedda62]

And there are some very interesting comments to that effect up on the story now. (No, I didn't write them. I'm equal parts "this is great, if sad, the way it is" and "they can still turn it into something that works, just not sexual" but mostly I am holding back and watching the fan response. *g*)

I posted something this summer on how weird it was to be going from writing fic based on books to fic based on visual media - in some ways I find it easier and in some ways it's much harder, but I was glad to find I could do it! The hardest part for me is the memory part - books you can flip through when you have to look up that wee bit of detail you've forgotten. Such a pain to do it with TV shows. But voices, I can do.

[philomytha]

Oh, the Attolia books are great. I must reread them sometime, I had a wonderful time with them, especially the King. And that crossover is very entertaining, too!

It is fascinating the way fics tell the same story over and over again in different ways. Sometimes I find that one particular fic becomes The Answer in my head, but more usually I see something differently convincing or fascinating in each variation. (My own half-written 'Escobar secrets' fic starts with Galeni learning the truth...) Other times, the particular story contains some kind of narrative kink I love, in which case I'm perfectly happy to see it over and over again even if there isn't anything fantastically original in it - and I think this accounts for quite a lot of the repeating stories, especially in bigger fandoms.

[ailis_fictive]

narrative kink--oh yes, certainly. We're back to oaths and loyalty again (fancy that!) and fandoms drawing people who like the things the fandom likes, who write the things they like, which draws people who like... And I think we might also be around to shipping, too, because if you are sufficiently in love with a particular character, or a pairing, watching them come together again, and again, and again...there's a couple of movie scenes that my husband looks up and watches on YouTube at least once a week. Like that. (I have a few book-scenes that I do the same thing with, less regularly...)

I'm also interested by the things we see *once*, though it may also have to do with the fact that certain stories can't be told without the space--and time--of a longer piece, and thus get written less often. I think I've found one "Miles does an Auditorial investigation." And then there's the missing scenes that are short, and tempting, but hard to write; I *adore* the one "Gregor and Simon's moring meeting during Memory" that I've seen...but I've only seen the one. (And it's currently working as The Answer for me, and I have no desire--or ability, I think!--to re-tell that one myself.)

(My own half-written 'Escobar secrets' fic starts with Galeni learning the truth...)

Ooof. There's an interesting wrinkle. (I think I've seen you mention this before, as I was wandering around the Internet?) I shall make hopeful eyes at you that it finds its way to complete someday.

[hedda62]

though it may also have to do with the fact that certain stories can't be told without the space--and time--of a longer piece, and thus get written less often

Or the mental effort? Making up Auditorial cases worthy of Miles is hard. It's always the plot that stymies me, and that I try to handwave or avoid. Whereas I can do emotional complication till the cows come home (and moo despondently and feudally).

But yes. I suspect there are lots of reasons that the one-shots are one-shots, but it's very interesting that they exist and what they turn out to be.

[philomytha]

Oh, heavens, plot. I'm pretty good at getting into plots, much worse at getting out of them, and plots which you're almost required to solve by the hero being very clever - which is to say, anything featuring Miles - are the hardest thing of all. I expect this goes a long way to explaining why the most popular stories to write are the ones where the (action/adventure/mystery/intrigue) plot, if any, takes a firm back seat to the emotional plot. (She says, looking at a fic where the action plot is fine but figuring out the emotional plot is almost impossible...)

Readers, of course, tend to like an action plot along with the emotional plot.

[ailis_fictive]

Plot, yes. Or possibly yeeesh. Story-shape I can do, but the actual brass tacks of plot... I just wrote an episode tag for a TV show that doesn't exist. I did not, note, write the *episode*. I know exactly as much of the events of the episode as was necessary to write the tag. I'd love to write the episode, but it's not *there*. (It would also require several orders of magnitude more world-building than I've done, in a world-style that I'm not great at building...)

[hedda62]

This is scarily similar to how I got started writing a series of what will be five or more novels. WATCH OUT. :)

[ailis_fictive]

...I am casual friends with an award winning writer who--before she was published--also started writing fic for a spinoff series that didn't exist--that is, an RPG framed as a spinoff as a real show. Which developed back-story, and a Next Generation...

And now has one novel published, the second going to press, the third being written, and the fourth under contract. I get a lot of amusement out of finding the shadows of the source series in the published book, though it's subtle enough that you have to know what to look for.

There's a couple other stories in this world I'd like to tell, and I'm idly looking at a couple of books that would be handy for world-buliding....

[hedda62]

Mine was going to be a one-off book about the fans of a particular series of time-travel novels. I ended up writing the series instead. No regrets.

[ailis_fictive]

<3

This is the one that you have a few chapters of up on Ao3? I have not read it yet, as I'm somewhat allergic to unfinished stories, but I suspect I'll break down before the end of December...

[ailis_fictive]

...I should probably note that I found the a novel-shaped story for this universe yesterday and it is now bubbling away in my backbrain.

It is also disturbingly romance-novel shaped, although with space pirates, political intrigue, war, and a happily-ever-after that is a lot closer to "we may be able to make this work. We sort of have to." than "And life is now all sunshine and rainbows."

[hedda62]

Love it already. :)

[ailis_fictive]

>Whereas I can do emotional complication till the cows come home (and moo despondently and feudally).

At which I laughed so hard I scared the cats.