Some completely unrelated things

[opusculus]

1. You know, I was about to say that I'm surprised none of the professional authors who hate fanfic and forbid it have ever done so because fanfic tends to reflect a certain level of quality, where it's good enough to attract people but not so good that those people don't see the holes and want to fix them. And then I remembered that that was my primary theory for why LKH and Anne Rice forbade fanfic. Never mind then!

2. I was rereading Hundred Thousand Kingdoms because it's awesome, and I really do regret that Kinneth died before the book starts because she hits so many of my pings. Yay for crazy awesome!

3. Why am I contemplating mermaid ethnicity and how a group of people turned into half-fish might actually evolve over millennia once they got transformed like that?

Comments

[katharos]

Re: Kinneth

I know! Yet at the same time it's really awesome for the dead parent being amazing in the backstory and dominating and shaping events from beyond the grave to be the mother for once.

[opusculus]

I do love that aspect of it! I can't actually remember another book offhand where the mother was the shaping force while the father was sidelined like that.

[harukami]

I don't really agree that it's about fixing the holes, per se, but it does tend to me to have SOME element of 'expanding on what exists in the canon'... I definitely don't think it's about the quality, though, at least from the perspective of THIS fic author haha.

[opusculus]

It's not quality absolutely? I mean, there's a lot of very good series that have big fandoms. But I know for me personally, when it's really extraordinary in some way (Utena, for example, and a very few other series) I have no real urge to read fanfic at all. I think there's some series that have room for fanfic no matter how well they're written when their worldbuilding is good enough, but...idk. Like, the worldbuilding in Discworld is plenty good enough? But I never really seek out fic for it because it just...idk. I have no clue where I'm going with this really.

[harukami]

Haha, I've written Utena fanfic! Just to explore the world and things like that more. For me it's an "experience" thing. Some worlds I want to "experience" first-hand.

I can't necessarily say I read fanfic for the same reasons as I write it, I just have to protest fanfic as a whole being written when associated with lower-quality works.

[opusculus]

Oh right, I'd forgotten about that. That makes sense! Yeah, thinking more on it, trying to use that even as a rough rule of thumb for smaller fandoms the way I tend to has so many exceptions that it doesn't really work. Oh well.

[harukami]

That said, I could definitely see a sort of perceived... "This is mine, not yours" that relates to that desire to play with/change sob.

[opusculus]

Yeah, pretty much. I wonder if canons with a very distinctive voice/style tend to have smaller fandoms than more generic ones? I'd assume so, but I'm not actually sure.

[harukami]

Not really, imho. I mean, some of the biggest fandoms have pretty distinct styles.

[opusculus]

Yeah, but isn't that mostly art styles rather than writing styles? I was thinking more in terms of it being harder to write in fandoms where you're dealing with a really distinctive original voice. Like, I avoid Discworld fanfic because either a) they don't try to write in Pratchett's style and it feels wrong or b) they do and it feels so off it bugs me. If you're dealing with distinctive art, it's probably not as relevant fanficwise.

(ALSO I HAVE A GIANT WASP IN MY PLACE AUGH

/needed to share this)

[harukami]

Not at all. Most of the time people either try to mimic it or just write their own style anyway. See Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and so on for some of the BIG fandoms whose original novels have a very distinct writing style.

[opusculus]

True! I always thought of the LotR fandom as being mostly movie-based, but I forgot about how active it was even well before the movies existed.

[harukami]

Book fandoms tend to be a bit smaller than movie fandoms in general but there are some exceptions. They're really hard for me to compare in size as a result though *g*

[opusculus]

Yeah, especially with all the book/movie crossover fandoms.