a fool's musings

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Fool, said my muse to me,
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2002-04-25 - 5:20 p.m.

title thoughts

I'm thinking "The Object of His Affections" is a better title than "Breakdowns and Wake-Up Calls."

I dunno.

What do you think?

Going home now. Finally.

Bleh.

~victoria
[current mood: headachy]
[current music: The Logical Song - Supertramp]

[current mood: ]
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[random quote: ]

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2002-04-25 - 10:48 a.m.

Reactive writing, take two

Khaki is doing a chronology of her fic, reminding me that I need to get back to mine (I stole the idea from Jenn. Don't know where she got it from or if her reasons for doing it are the same as mine).

It's funny, because I've always denied having any impact on XMM fanon, but honestly, I guess I'm kind of proud of my one contribution, which was the coolification of Scott.

I don't know if it was simply carryover from the comics and all the loathing Scott engenders in comic fans for myriad reasons, or if it was simply "He's not Logan" rearing its ugly head or what, but I remember being really annoyed and irritated in the early days of XMM fandom, especially in Wolverine/Rogue circles, where Scott was always this really irritating jackass whose only function was to disapprove of everything and be uncool and make Logan look good.

All the reasons for this were explained to me by various people - his comics characterization, his big sin for which he's never been forgiven, and so on and so forth.

But...

That wasn't the guy I saw on screen.

I saw a very attractive, very confident young man - cocky, even - who was at least projecting an air of authority; a man who was in love with his girlfriend, who looked like he orders in bulk from Abercrombie & Fitch (though not, of course, the insensitive t-shirt line that they've been censured for recently), a man with a strong sense of responsibility and -- and here's the kicker, folks - a man with a sense of humor.

So, The Best-Laid Plans began coalescing in my brain. Rogue/Scott undertones, with a cool!Scott and the beginning of many fics where I had Rogue and Scott be surrogate siblings to each other.

That's also where Faculty Follies and The Real Slim Shady came from [though much later on in my "career"].

The thing is, without all the anti-Scott sentiment going around, I'd never have bothered.

Why am I talking about this?

Reactive fanfic and reactive writers.

Jenn wrote...
I mean, I never would have gotten around to writing Logan/Jean in movieverse without the sheer, unending glut of mediocre and crapfic Evil Jean stories. It was pure luck that near the end, I didn't want to kill Rogue and send Logan to Jean forever--yes, I AM that reactive.

See, I will be the first to admit, loudly and long, that I do not like Jean Grey.

Most of it is residual memories from the old cartoon series, where she'd use her power and then wilt, crying out, "Scott!" and Scott would rush to her side crying, "Jean!" and Logan would stand off to the side muttering, "Jean!" and pine pathetically for her.

There's also the fact that every X-Man ever seems to have been in love with her at one time or another, while other female characters go begging for a little love [see Ororo. Why the hell doesn't she have men and women begging to be her love slaves? I. Don't. Get. It. And then there's comic!Rogue, who needs to get out of her endless soap opera "romance" with Remy and hook up with someone who's not going to break her heart repeatedly ::coughLogancough::, and Jubilee (who ought to be *at least* 18 by now, and Jesus, Kitty was with Pete Wisdom when she was younger than that, so let the little firecracker have a good time!) and Emma Frost, and well, I'm sure there are others who go unloved and unshagged while all the men fall over themselves pining for Jean. But I'm not bitter. *g*]

However, if you read my first ventures into fic, Jean is sympathetic. She and Rogue are not enemies; she comforts Rogue, Rogue confides in her.

Then fanon set in, and the bitch!Jean, the romantic obstacle Jean, the faithless whore Jean began appearing.

I'm guilty of it. I still have to fight every instinct when I write not to make her into that evil manstealing ho.

I mean, I can point to a number of fics I wrote simply in reaction to reading Logan/Jean fic. Which is why I no longer do so. I can't even stomach the merest *hint* that they will end up in a loving relationship. A fling? Sure. A relationship that doesn't work out in the end, for various reasons? All right. But the idea of them living happily ever after together squicks me on levels that I didn't even know *existed.*

Yeah, I can write stump-fucking without flinching, but Logan/Jean gives me hives and makes me want to yak.

I'm an odd duck.

< shrug >

I think I've mentioned my over-identification with both Rogue and Scott, which is the major contributing factor in this response.

Anyhow, Evil!Jean, in the hands of a good writer, can be an interesting and fun occasional characterization. It shouldn't be, and yet it became, the norm.

And handled so badly that the character wasn't even Jean Grey anymore, didn't even resemble the woman I saw onscreen.

Thus, 32 Flavors and various other fics in which I attempt to deal with my own Jean issues, and combat the ever-increasing proliferation (how's that for repetitive redundancy? *g*) of badly written Evil!Jean fic in the L/R world.

I am very much a reactive writer, but I react to other fic mostly, *not* what I see onscreen, if that makes sense.

While some people are anti-canon, I am anti-fanon. I think fanon serves a purpose, but more often, I want to rip it to shreds and make something new out of it. Turn it inside out and upside down.

If I don't want to be constrained by what the actual *author* of a work puts into canon, why the hell am I going to let other fans dictate canon to me?

Anyhow...

When I was talking about reactive v. speculative writers yesterday, I meant people who react to what is shown onscreen and then feel the need to fix it, whether by showing us what went unseen, avenging wrongs on their favorite characters [the urge to kill Bo Kent in fic seems to be a popular reaction to Reaper], or, in noromo fic, trying to make sense of the gaping plot holes the writers try to pretend aren't there [hello? Since *when* has magic been addictive in the Bverse? And has the conspiracy ever made sense on XF?].

At the most basic level, *all* fanfiction is reactive.

We read a work [I'm using read, even though we may *watch* or, in the case of BBS, listen[?]] and see things we want to fix, or characters we think should get together, or have stories we want to tell in that "caged baby universe"tm*. We may think we're "transgressing" the original text. We may think we're supplementing it. We may think we're simply getting our rocks off or honing our writing skills.

Whatever.

Bottom line is, we're reacting to someone else's work.

The form the reaction takes is different for everyone. There are as many reasons to write fanfic as there are people who write it.

Now, take me and Smallville.

I like Smallville, the show.

I love Lex Luthor. And Lionel Luthor. And Chloe Sullivan.

I most definitely adore the Clark/Lex relationship and the subtext the show is giving us, with the shadow of doom hanging over them. ::shivers::

I really like some of the fic the fandom has produced (and the thing I really like about Livia's X-Title Challenge? Lots of short fic I can read quickly and send FB for. I was feeling like a big old non-contributor to the fandom for a while, since my backlog of fic to read is so huge, I hadn't been sending feedback or anything, and I hate that. These fics, read three or four at a sitting, bang out a couple lines of FB and send it off and feel as though I'm not just a bump on a log, taking up space and being unproductive, and many of them are just so good and punchy. One day I'll have to examine why I don't like many original short stories but positively adore them in fanfic) and some of the people I've met in the fandom.

But Smallville doesn't resonate with me the way Buffy once did, or the way X-Men still does.

Which could be why I'm not producing the same amount of fic I produced at the beginning of my time in XMM fandom.

Of course, there are other reasons, as well. I've never written much Buffy fic, and part of that is because I know the show could [or, used to be able to] do it better. Part of it is not liking the idea of being Jossed, or having this evolving canon to deal with.

A movie? Easy-peasy. 90 minutes of canon, 30 years of backstory I can ignore or use at my leisure, and the firm knowledge that nothing I come up with will *ever* appear onscreen.

A television show? Evolving characters. Weekly plots. Arcs. All sorts of stuff to worry about, like what's Chloe's mom's name, and if I name her Evie and then the show turns around and names her Jane, I have to go back and fix my fic, etc.

Also, sometimes I like to be a passive consumer of television. It's easier to sit on the couch and watch the show without having to worry about how the football season in the SV universe apparently extends into spring, or that time is just elastic on the show, or it's not happening in "real time" like, say Buffy or Felicity is (at least in terms of following the calendar and the school year etc.).

So yeah, not so heavily emotionally invested in Smallville, so I'm not developing Clark Issues like Jenn or Te (and let us pause for a moment as I give a little girly-shriek at being included in Te's links). Strangely enough, I find it much easier to write from Clark's POV, but I don't know if that's the real Clark I'm writing, or just my preferred version of him.

And now work has interrupted, so I don't really recall where I was going with this.

Anyhow, I hope it made sense.

*"caged baby universes" is, I believe, a Warren Ellis coinage. Mr. Ellis does not approve of fanfic at all, from what I understand. I do not particularly care for his attitude. He seems like a prick, a very talented prick, but a prick nonetheless. But what the hell do I know?

As always, comments are welcome.

~victoria
[current mood: bemused]
[current music: Everything You Want - Vertical Horizon]

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2002-04-25 - 12:35 a.m.

GTKY and stump fornication

HTMLizing these GTKYs is killing me.

Gah.

Bolding every other line... grrr...

stupid email-fic.

If I change the look of my site, all stories are going to be .txt files next time. None of this fiddling with fancy colors and such. *G*

Jenn responds to my dissertation [snerk] on shock value with this:
So. Is this a legitimate reason to write?

I'm of the school that says that if you're good at it, I don't give a crap on motivations. I bore easily with lofty ideals and have been known to fall asleep when someone is trying to give us the fanfiction equivalent of Watership Down. Not that I'm against the concept of having a Greater Goal, but sometimes, people seem to forget that the journey to the Greater Goal is as important as the ending. It's something that fanfic writers and prowriters share to an alarming degree--we're so hot to GET there that we forget to make sure the journey is just as unforgettable.

Hmm...

I don't disagree with this at all.

And I don't think Jenn's Bedtime Stories is shockfic in the way she might.

I mean, it works as a story. It grows out of the characters. I can *see* that conversation happening [along with the actions in the sequel].

The point is this: it's a well-written story. It may be shocking, and Jenn's intentions in writing it may have been to shock - but my other slams against shock fic don't fit. It's not shocking in order to cover plot holes or characterization problems. It's not shocking because Jenn doesn't have the skill to evoke an emotional response from the reader in any other way.

Look, we all get cool ideas that may be somewhat ... odd, and we write them because, well, that's what we do.

I've written things that probably shocked one person or another, though I never heard about it. I've written things simply to get under Pete's skin. *g*

So maybe I'm revising, but I think that being shocking for its own sake is still generally bad writing, simply because the people who do it the most aren't skilled enough to carry it off, and are most likely doing it for one of the other reasons cited.

I wrote:
Shockfic is having him cut off his mother's head and then fuck the bloody stump of her neck.

Just because he can!

Jenn said:
I so want to marry you, Victoria. Write me this?

Scarily enough, I believe I am ready to rise to the stump-fucking challenge.

That makes me think---I wonder if this comes back to skill level. Frankly, if YOU wrote it, Victoria, I would read it. Because there would be more than stump fornication going on, I'm sure.

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Remember I mentioned vague notions of writing a fic based on "Can't Stop Killing You" by Kirstie MacColl?

I think this could work. I really do.

And how fucking sad and or scary is it that Jenn can challenge me to write stump-fucking fic and I can come up with a plot and an opening paragraph in less than an hour?

::shakes head::

I scare me sometimes.

...

Eep.

I forgot I was in the middle of writing this and totally lost whatever thoughts I was having.

Sigh.

"It's a terrible thing to lose your mind." ~Dan Quayle

***

Okay, finally got the whole of Getting to Know You: Smallville up on The Muse's Fool.

It's a silly little email survey as answered by Smallville characters, written by Jenn, Andy, Bethy, Bonnie and me. Go read. Enjoy. Send feedback.

G'night.

~victoria

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The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme.

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