(no subject)
Feb. 13th, 2007 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnyDo you reckon it's the whole English Language degree thing that makes me so intolerant of badly written child-babble? Or just that it's really fuckin' annoying?
XD
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soupytwist and I have just been chatting about character-wish-fulfillment-fic versus wish-fulfillment-fic. See, I read a final part to a fanfic that I've been vaguely enjoying, although this... the first part of it was by far the best, and that's because it was faintly angsty and bitchy and really brought the characters through to me. A couple of parts down the line and the characters really could have been anyone, because the author seemed more interested in portraying the relationship the way that they wanted rather than thinking about the characterisation. And for me, character voice is absolutely the most important thing, because I hate to be jarred out of a story.
So character-wish-fulfillment-fic will always be what I want to read and what I hope to write. The mindset of 'this is what the characters want, in my head, and this is what I'm going to write for them.' Fulfilling the character's wishes, according to the way they're written in the show, is more likely to end with a decently characterised fic.
The other side of it, the wish-fulfillment-fic, is more the thinking up of cute scenarios and then twisting the characters to fit. I have absolutely been unforgivably guilty of this, I won't deny that for a second. (Here's a secret - I'm really not a very good writer, yet. But I'm learning how to work on that). It can be done, don't get me wrong, it's just the way that it's done that grates.
I dunno. It's a whole issue - how far can you/should you extrapolate characterisation? Everyone sees the characters a certain way, and quite possibly I'm just bitching because this person's view didn't mesh with my own. I mean, if we're going to get high-horsey about it, every character I've ever written in slash has been wildly OOC because in canon they're not actually screwing whoever it is I've decided to ensure that they do. (Um. Especially, say, Scabbers. Or Kreacher. ¬_¬) There just seems to be a particular subset of romantic fic which ends up reading like some anonymous gay couple rather than the characters I know and love.
Ah well. To each his own; fanfic is, essentially, wish fulfillment. I'll just have to find authors who wish for intensely snarky fic in which any declarations of love are accidental and immediately retracted, in which feelings are never ever discussed unless there is enormous discomfort involved, and in which Rodney gets whumped at least a little. :D
XD
soupytwist and I have just been chatting about character-wish-fulfillment-fic versus wish-fulfillment-fic. See, I read a final part to a fanfic that I've been vaguely enjoying, although this... the first part of it was by far the best, and that's because it was faintly angsty and bitchy and really brought the characters through to me. A couple of parts down the line and the characters really could have been anyone, because the author seemed more interested in portraying the relationship the way that they wanted rather than thinking about the characterisation. And for me, character voice is absolutely the most important thing, because I hate to be jarred out of a story. So character-wish-fulfillment-fic will always be what I want to read and what I hope to write. The mindset of 'this is what the characters want, in my head, and this is what I'm going to write for them.' Fulfilling the character's wishes, according to the way they're written in the show, is more likely to end with a decently characterised fic.
The other side of it, the wish-fulfillment-fic, is more the thinking up of cute scenarios and then twisting the characters to fit. I have absolutely been unforgivably guilty of this, I won't deny that for a second. (Here's a secret - I'm really not a very good writer, yet. But I'm learning how to work on that). It can be done, don't get me wrong, it's just the way that it's done that grates.
I dunno. It's a whole issue - how far can you/should you extrapolate characterisation? Everyone sees the characters a certain way, and quite possibly I'm just bitching because this person's view didn't mesh with my own. I mean, if we're going to get high-horsey about it, every character I've ever written in slash has been wildly OOC because in canon they're not actually screwing whoever it is I've decided to ensure that they do. (Um. Especially, say, Scabbers. Or Kreacher. ¬_¬) There just seems to be a particular subset of romantic fic which ends up reading like some anonymous gay couple rather than the characters I know and love.
Ah well. To each his own; fanfic is, essentially, wish fulfillment. I'll just have to find authors who wish for intensely snarky fic in which any declarations of love are accidental and immediately retracted, in which feelings are never ever discussed unless there is enormous discomfort involved, and in which Rodney gets whumped at least a little. :D
