Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2015-02-28 04:11 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2015-02-28 04:11 pm
[ SECRET POST #2978 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2978 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 107 secrets from Secret Submission Post #426.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
I mean yes I like fandom, but I've got to like the canon, and I've got to be invested enough in the canon to really get into fandom. It doesn't even happen to me with every show I like - I consume far more media than I participate in fandoms of.
And I agree that ultimately, I haven't yet encountered fics that are better than the best books I've read. It's rare that a fic *really* stays with me, and even fics that I remember fondly, if I try to come back to them a few years later when I'm no longer quite as in the fandom I find that they fall a bit flat for me (unlike some books, which I read and loved when I was young and still love many years later). (I also more often find in fandom that when I look back at fics several years later, many are a lot less well written than I had remembered).
no subject
(Anonymous) 2015-03-01 09:05 am (UTC)(link)Very much with you on going back to re-read fics I'd enjoyed and not finding them as good or well-written as I did the first time. I think it's probably because when you first get into any fandom, you pretty much devour everything there is that fits your ship or whatever other preference you might have, and maybe the sheer enthusiasm makes you less critical?
It's also just a matter of experience -- I remember feeling hugely intimidated by some fics from my early fandoms, only to go back a few years later with a lot more reading and writing under my belt and wondering what had impressed me so much.
But yeah, I don't really have fics that stay with me either, certainly not in the same emotional way as some books. Or even the true canon of whichever fandom it is, really. Don't get me wrong, I've really enjoyed some fics, but I guess I'll always see them as an adjunct to the actual canon so they'll never quite trump that for me. My attachment is to canon, be it before I even venture into the fandom, or after I've left that fandom and stopped reading/writing in it, I'll still love the canon itself.
no subject
I've also come to that realization - there are some authors I used to look up to so much, and now it's amazing to realize that I write as well if not better than they do.
See, you're reminding me of this idiotic argument I got into on another group, where somebody was claiming that NOBODY is ever into fandom for the canon, all people want is archetypes they can tell their own stories about. My stance was no, while maybe some people are like that there are plenty of others who like fandoms for a specific canon, and care about canon more than fanon at the end of the day.
She told me I suffer from "false consciousness" and that I'm wrong.
The conversation didn't really go anywhere intelligent.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2015-03-01 09:58 am (UTC)(link)That's definitely been the case for me. I don't really care or seek out any specific quality of fic, I just want to see the characters I've come to love from canon in whatever scenario I'm craving at that point.
Yep, exactly that. I remember the first fandom I actually wrote for (...wow, probably about 15 years ago now), there were a couple of writers who everyone gushed over. And their stuff was so different to the things I'd been reading up until that point that I gushed too. A few years (and a LOT of writing, critiquing, critical thinking and especially a shitton of reading) later, they just read like the sort of pretentious "I've swallowed a thesaurus and now feel the need to regurgitate it on the page for you!" writing that I back-button like hell away from these days. At the time though, both the writers and their audience were pretty young and we all probably thought that's what "Good" writing was supposed to be.
LOL, yeah, no. I write my own original fic for archetypes I can tell my own stories about. Bending someone else's already-formed characters to fit that need seems like a terribly unsatisfying way of achieving it to me. I'm in fandom because I want more of the canon, and more of the stuff canon won't/can't explore, but I still don't ever divorce those characters from their original canon. I see fanworks as out-takes or extra scenes from canon. As "this is what might happen when the credits roll" or "this is what happened before the credits started." Even when it comes to AUs, because the only reason AUs 'work' is because you have a pre-existing knowledge of how these characters act in their own universe, and the fun of AUs is seeing how that would play out against another backdrop.
tl;dr, canon's always at the core for me, even when I'm subverting it, because otherwise there'd be nothing to subvert. I can't understand anyone who'd get into fandoms without at least having canon as a frame of reference, whether you objectively like it or not.
no subject
Same for me regarding AUs - if it's too far from canon I just lose interest, because they don't feel like the characters for me. What makes an AU interesting imo is the interaction between the AU and canon. If that doesn't exist, I don't really get into it (hence my massive lack of interest in all the coffee shop AUs, say. I'm also very picky about my fantasy staying fantasy of some sort).
The only fandom I ever got mildly into without knowing the canon was way back in the heyday of Gundam Wing. I read a bunch of fics, and then searched out the source material. Which I loved, and then couldn't read a single fic ever again because I had no idea how they got from a series all about politicking to... whatever it was the fandom was going on about.
For me if anything writing fanfics allows me to try writing types of characters I wouldn't necessarily have come up with on my own. Rather than push them into the squares I like, I try to figure them out, and I think it has helped me over the years find more character voices and write more diverse types.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2015-03-01 11:54 am (UTC)(link)