... is a weekly column
written by Trapdoor Spider.
It's about art, creation,
magic.
It's about how feeling
good helps you do these things.
Below is this week's
column; archives follow.
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January 12, 2005 Trapdoor Spider has two major writing deadlines for the end of next week. There will be a column about them, natch. Current plan is for columns, Baker's 12, and PG For Peril to return before the end of January, probably with exciting back-to-back episodes, that kind of thing. Yes, it is all a learning process. So I get to then pass the wisdom on to you. Thanks again.
NEW KIND OF KICK
Announcements: 1. There is a column on the 12th (Nov28), a column on the 13th (Dec5), a column on the 19th (Dec12) and on the 20th (Dec20). 2. Note the official date of the last column mentioned above is not the 19th. The Teddybear Sawdust Show! now publishes on Mondays. 3. Baker's 12 also publishes Mondays. There should be one on
the 13th or not too long after.
Recent historical markers:
And now: Fanfic Mailbag! TempuS:
The Quiller elist was a forum for the exploration of a series of novels, at its best less a fan appreciation gathering (although there was plenty of that) than a series of ongoing lit crit discussions. (Yes, Adam Hall is just that good.) All of the fiction written on that elist was either humourous/parodic or experimental/scholarly. Examples of the latter include pieces written in emulation of author's style, and The Bamboo Coda, which crossed several famous fictional spies in order to examine what kind of disastrous situation would result if they all tried to function in the same world together. As TempuS puts it: I wanted to explore aspects of the character which might strike a chord with fellow fanatiQs. Clearly the examples on the Qlist do not fall within my definition of fanfic, so let me add a clarifier: It is not fanfic (for the purposes of this discussion) if the author has made it clear that the characters used are not to be confused with the actual characters. Was that sentence supposed to clear things up? I would never, ever want any of those stories to come anywhere near a publisher's desk in their current form. I would classify them not as fanfic, but as occupying the shadow region between pastiche (too mocking-sounding) and homage (too grandiose). Pastiche is a tricky word. Usually when I see it, it means, "Playing around in somebody else's sandbox without having obtained permission from the estate." I would love to read your shot at Quiller. Oh, and I'd be great at it. I even gave it some thought a while back, write a chapter or two, send it to the estate, let it speak for itself to convince everyone that I'm the guy to do this (since I thought it inevitable this would happen anyway, might as well ensure it gets done right). But there were two things that ultimately dissuaded me: 1. These were not my own stylistic Hall-marks. This was someone else's style I was slipping into, another man's skin, not something I came into on my own. 2. If I'm going to come up with a great spy story, I'm going to give
it to one of my own spies, thanks. Which is the arrogant way of saying
what I did in the conclusion of the original fanfic column.
Talyesin:
No way. It's a dissemination that takes place on a stage. To that extent, are the multitude of Star Trek and Star Wars novels,officially sanctioned, fanfic? Why not? They take place in and around the original storylines, and for the most part are not written by the original authors. I'd just like to interject with the word continuity, a can of worms I made sure to avoid the first time out. Dr. Who was never written to have any, Star Trek tried to be internally consistent and then tossed that out the window, and Star Wars... Oh, Hell, at this point who knows? The Star Wars novels might be continuity, unless the movies contradict them. So much for magical intent. There's a reason storytellers don't begin by saying, "This may or may not have happened... " Are they not fanfic because they're published? Is the medium the delineating factor? On paper = notfanfic, online = fanfic? Actually the answer to this one is pretty obvious: They're not fanfic because they're not written by fans. They're works set in a particular universe which have been sanctioned by the creator of that universe, or his estate. (You could argue, if you didn't like Scarlett, that the sequel to Gone With The Wind somehow doesn't count, but bear in mind that many authors have produced less-inspired sequels to their own classics.) These stories are collaborations. Lovecraft made the statement that anything others wrote about the Mythos was true, basically making all of his fans collaborators. Medium is irrelevant. Why is it wrong to take a universe you love and explore it further? Sorry you seem to have misread the column, but I never, ever suggested what you are implying. Uncharacteristic actions on the part of the main characters may or may not be deliberate, but why does that matter? Because I value honesty. Isn't the creative process the point? This is why I'm ambivalent about fanfic: I believe in letting creativity go wild, but the creativity I see in fanfic feels watered-down, or at worst, false. I mean, we role-play in pre-existing universes.
You of all people should know my answer to this question. How many times
in the last ten years have you heard me ask questions like, "Do we really
need to do Star Trek again?" and "Would it not be possible for us
to create our own universes?" These are unquantifiables, of course, but
in my evaluation consulting a sourcebook, be it printed or televised, limits
the extent to which you are truly exploring strange new worlds.
AI731:
Absolutely. This is a seminar, not a lecture. (Note: This is the perspective of an honest-to-gosh slash writer. Isn't that keen? The Teddybear Sawdust Show! - now with expert testimony!) 99.9% of fanfic on the Internet today is utter crap...
The prevelance of it on the 'net today astounds and concerns me -
particularly the Harry Potter stuff, because it's quite likely that kids
who are genuinely interested in HP could stumble across it online. I'm
against online censorship, and so I don't see a solution to this...
Ship is driven by on-screen UST (unresolved sexual tension) between two characters. Think Mulder & Scully. Slash is too. 'Ah,' you say, 'but there's *isn't* on-screen UST between straight male characters.' Actually, sometimes there is. It has to do with social distance and aspect ratio. Please pardon me for getting technical here for a minute: As I'm sure you know, different human cultures have different 'social distances'; the physical distance at which it is 'acceptable' for two non-related or non-romantically involved people to be in a social situation. We learn it as children and it's ingrained in our subconscious. Here's where aspect ratio comes in. When shooting for television, in order to have two protagonists in a medium close up (head and shoulders shot); they have to stand closer to one another than normal 'social distance' dictates. So, in a television series about 'buddies' (partners, cops, shipmates, etc.) the 'buddies' are constantly breaking social distance just to be in the same shot. Add to this the overt emoting that male characters do for the storyline's dramatic purposes (Partner A holding Partner B in his arms after he's been shot, etc.) and you have UST between to male, and nominally hetrosexual characters. All on a subconscious level. (Beginning to wonder if, rather than trying to edit this, I should have just linked to it.) Authorial intent: 'slash *can't* be true to the characters when the author has portrayed them overtly or not, as straight. Generally, yes. However... A talented author starts with the proposition: "a non-insignificant percentage of the population has the potential to be bisexual" (cf. Kinsey, et al.) She (and I use 'she' very consciously here, slash is written almost exclusively by straight and bi women - I've been in the community for a *long* time, and I know of two men who write slash, one gay, one bi) then proceeds to weave a plausible set of circumstances whereby that potential has the opportunity to express itself, and does. It takes a talented author. There aren't many of them out there. Some of us try anyway A writing exercise, then: "Under what circumstances... ?" Interesting. Intelligent adult slash authors don't pretend what they are doing
is literature. Their intended audience is slash fans, and not the general
public. They understand that they are playing in someone else's sandbox
under sufferance and try to do so discretely and politely.
At risk of opening up discussion of gender differences in approach to sexuality, I think I'll just delicately suggest that the slash you've described is a mental process, while porn is more, erm, functional, and leave it at that. When fans see the merchandising, the spin offs, the 'official novelizations'
the 'books based on the series', the 'film of the book'
I understand it. I'd love to write a Quiller novel, a Tara Chace script. I'll be putting together a Prisoner of Zenda radio drama some day (that would be an adaptation). But of course when it comes to spy stories I'd sooner write Marc Binary, or KVK, or whoever's narrating SRS. (Yes, Marc, SRS is high on the priority list. Very high. Sadly, maybe not high enough for you, since only the top two or three get my attention at a time.) Yes, it has now spilled over into books and films, etc., but I think the roots of fanfiction were in TV and comics (how many kids in the '60s drew their own Superman cartoons?) Fair enough! Thanks for an interesting read. Likewise.
Last item, for the time being. The Brotherhood Of The Silver Cross started off as a rudimentary idea: What would be the ideal group of literary characters one would enlist to fight an army of vampires? Never thought of it as fanfic; it was an exercise, akin to asking, "Which Dickens character is most like Holden Caulfield?" Then I started developing it, and it became a giant fight story. Then I started writing it, and it became an examination of archetypes as godforms. But with mass killin'. Then one day somebody called it fanfiction, and I said, "Ouch! Dammit, you're right." But now I disagree. Because the very act of taking the characters out of their worlds to battle these vampires shouts "These are characters" and thus "This didn't really happen." See the non-helpful clarification I posited above. (Although the way my novel's metaphysics operate, you can't really say, "This didn't really happen.") It's complicated.
Here; relax with some good ol' straightforward Baker's 12: Week
72
OBSTACLE 1
Are you planning not to take a hit? That's good. It's good to have a plan like that. Plans like that help you avoid taking a hit. But they only help, and they're not the solution. Because everybody takes a hit. No plan is going to put this off forever. As the saying goes, life gets in the way. Maybe a friend will have a personal emergency, maybe you'll catch a cold that flattens you for a couple of days. Maybe someone will throw an impromptu get-together, or an old friend will call, or you'll just feel like doing something else today. You can't ignore these non-emergencies; meeting creative goals is important, but one still has to live one's life. So: You are supposed to take a hit. I missed a Baker's 12 because I was out of town visiting my brother and it was either Baker's 12 or a talk, just the two of us, for the first time in about a year. Baker's 12, I decided, could afford to be late. And it is. As I write this, I am 5 weeks behind on Baker's 12. Some of the hits I took I'm more willing to forgive myself for than others, but they are what happened; I wanted to finish the year up-to-date and I won't. The true test, as I'm sure you all know, is what you do after you've been hit. 1. Delay is habit-forming. Witness these columns. I extend thanks to the person who bugged me about them last night. These columns are back on track. 2. Take stock of what you did accomplish while you were taking the hit.
(In my case, for example, I managed to meet a magazine deadline while visiting my brother, and this despite the power failure.) 3. Evaluate where the obstacle came from, how it got there. Will it happen again? Will you react differently if it does? Did you misjudge your scheduling, eat shellfish without knowing it, get sick because you were pushing yourself too hard? (I love that one. My usual reaction to an illness is, "Well, it's about time you showed up!" And the performers I know always find it weird to be healthy during the last week of the show's run.) If it is going to happen again, and you'll probably react the same way, accept this. 4. Get over it. Forgive yourself, re-fortify your strength. 5. Get up and kill. That is to say, of course, that the key is not to avoid getting hit; the key is to roll with it when it comes and strike back even harder. What does not kill me makes me stronger; if at first you don't succeed... Plenty of helpful sayings for this situation. My personal motto is, quite simply: I am not going to let this beat me. So B12 is behind. Big whoop. I was twice as far behind this time last year. It'll get done. And it's going to be grand; I have big plans for 80 and 81. The group of people I am proud to call my friends do it to ourselves. "How are you?" "I dunno, kinda dissatisfied." "How come?" "No idea, I have every reason to be happy, things are going great, and yet I'm not quite happy; I'm a bit blah and moody." Yes! Self-induced dissatisfaction. I get like this all the time. (Hey, you realised all along these columns are mostly reminders to myself, right?) Do you know what I do when I'm in this blah mood? I snap myself out of it the only way I know how: I plan to do way too much. Incoming! But even at one out of three objectives met, damn do things get done.
but I get up again / You ain't never gonna keep me down.
A GAME CALLED ECHO
Thanks for your patience. I'm back! Hope you packed a lunch.
Still haven't regained count:
MAILBAG!
On violence: LV, who is writing a series of short stories about a mouse:
This raises the questions of violent stories - wait, I must amend that - stories with violence in them. Are they celebratory, do they perpetuate, or are they investigative, do they explore the topic? Pulp Fiction has been accused of promoting drug use, and maybe you could argue that for a while initially the characters seem to be having fun, but after that... Then again, even Trainspotting has been accused of promoting drug use. Yeah, I would argue that Trainspotting encourages free thought, and often this leads to drug use (experimental, as in my case), but I think the movie presents enough examples of negative things happening that there's no ambiguity about drugs being bad. (Mkay?) (Can I just say again how angry it makes me to hear John Carpenter's Vampires described as a misogynist film? It's not. It has misogynist characters. Learn the difference or shut the hell up.) The paintings referred to below are an abstract of the upper half of a woman, in red and earth tones. The second is like a cave painting, stick figures spearing an antlered four-legged animal: I've attached two of my paintings at the bottom of this. The first one, to me, feels like one of the most violent pieces I've done. But it's not a blood and guts kind of violence, it's the passive, "sure, you can hurt me", and the second is just an example of how all art, right from the beginning, involves some kind of violence. It's inherent in the core of ourselves, but what differs is how we approach the subject. Humans are vulnerable; some are more aware of that than others. (Related to a conversation I had about smiling at or saying Hello to strangers on the street. This other person had not encountered the same unwelcome stances I have. She is not male.) And yeah, violence has been with all meat-eaters since the beginning. Two excellent points. You go on about how there are lots of deaths in your work. That's true. Gratuitous or not, that's what happens when you deal with those kinds of conflict. If you wanted to stop you could write about Flopsy the bunny stealing carrots from Farmer Brown, although you can be sure that Farmer Brown's got a loaded 20 and is looking for some rabbit stew. I included that last paragraph because it amuses me so. Support for LV's position comes from AM-H:
That Parisian room full of heads was about deadlines and writing what you know (and the influence of TMBG). Your use of violence is a reflection of the characters' psyches. There is so much inner conflict that one of the only ways to show the reader, without dropping into boring exposition, is by tossing physical violence in. It is never superfluous. It is always carefully throughout out, and very possibly may be defined as a character in its own right. Xerox is a very violent man. I never really noticed before how his inner demons manifest in physical (and verbal) violence, because I write my characters intuitively. And yes, Nature is inherently violent. And as mankind belongs to that group, yes, we too are inherently violent, despite all our civilised veneers. The problems occur when we pretend this isn't the case.
On singing in public: PP:
Yeah, me too. I think it's sad how often self-expression is frowned
upon. Perhaps if people were more comfortable with themselves, they would
be less affronted by others. I feel the same way about those who object
to public affection.
Well, you've had your say. Back to my show once more, The Teddybear Sawdust Show! (This is the correct name, btw: The capitalised, exclamation
point. Word.)
Today's topic is... Fanfic. Some of you have just had a visceral response. I know, me too. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked, because it should make you even more excited about my column than you usually are. I used to do fanfic. I would come home from school, sit down in front of the television, and play with my Star Wars action figures. This was after 1983, when the Star Wars saga had been completed. I had several Lukes, so I assigned different characters to them, like Wedge and Zev and Dack. Note that according to official continuity, two of these were dead (quite solidly). Also, Han and Leia were married and had a son (my other Han Solo figure; don't ask me how old the character was). Admiral Ackbar was a spymaster (okay, it is a Naval tradition, so why not? I guess that would make him Admiral Sir Ackbar, aka "A." Who worries about these things?). Etcetera, etcetera. So I understand fanfic. You love a set of characters so much you think about them when the book is shut or the TV's off, and imagining their continuing adventures is a natural extension of that: "Wouldn't it be cool if... " And this is where the problem starts. Fanfic to most people is not cool, for several reasons. Most of these reasons, as is the way of Human thought, are due to the actions of an extreme, very visible, minority. If I wrote a short humour piece about Harry and Ron trying to figure out what their lunch was made of, this would get much less attention than someone else's tale of Harry and Ron bukkaking (it is so a verb, nyah) Hermione. Unfortunately most of this discussion is directed at the sexual fanfic, not only because this is the stuff that gets people's backs up, but also because this is the most obvious point where the creator and the fan's idea of the world diverges. (Here's a question: Bukkake. Is it a so-called offensive word? It describes something that people who care about offensive words would find objectionable to describe, but if these people know what it means, isn't that their own fault? So if I use the word, expecting only sewer-dwellers such as myself to understand it, much like the teevee euphemism "make whoopee," is it offensive? Hm. Different column.) I hated the Darth Vader vs. Boba Fett comic for so many reasons, but it was an "official" product, hence not fanfic. But I daresay having Vader not obliterate Fett in five seconds makes it a work that ignores the textual evidence. Which brings us to exactly the type of fanfic that makes my teeth itch: The type that willfully disregards the work which it ostensibly honours. (We are of course omitting parodies from this discussion.) I'm talking the type of stuff where you read it and you ask yourself, loudly, "Where in the text did you get this from?" As an author, I'd be mad to discover that someone had written Tex/Butch slash (particularly in Butch's current form), because those characters are heterosexual (although not everyone in the story is), and knowing what I do about them I know a sexual union between them would never happen. So as an author my question would be, "Do you honestly think this is in any way likely?" Because if you do, either A) I have failed to convey character, or B) you have failed as a lector. For the record, though, if you wrote a story in which Tex delivered a fridge with Butch inside of it in order to infiltrate a gang, that might be pretty cool. The difference clearly is whether these things are in character. I cannot accept the argument that fanfic is a tribute when the characters in question have as little to do with the originals as the characterisations of the two returning characters in MI:2 had with their personalities in the first movie. If you're moved to further the adventures of certain characters, why on Earth would you have these characters behave out of character? Why even write it at all? I'm in favour of writing, of course, and if you're moved to write something, great, go for it, but this type of thing sorely tests my ability to be supportive. And my willingness. I hesitate to support someone's creative expression if I feel it somehow dishonours someone else's. Unless fanfic is some massive prank that I'm just not getting. I'm pretty sure it isn't; some people take it very seriously. Which brings me to some of their arguments. 1. It doesn't damage the original story.
2. We want to know what happens next.
3. Stories are mutable, though! Remember the oral tradition?
Time to stop; I've begun to have second thoughts about this column. I think it's starting to sound too harsh. I want to stress that I am not opposed to fanfic; I am conflicted by it. I am opposed to trying to tell a creator what his characters should be doing, and I am very opposed to lying about your motives if you're playing in another's sandbox, hence the tone I adopted during the points above. It's an interesting kind of thing. Also a very modern phenomenon, I think. An Internet thing, a Cult of Celebrity thing. Makes me wonder what's next to get conflicted about. My last word on fanfic: I know you love that story, and I think that's great. But if you love it, if you really love it, you'll let it be what it is, accept that. Even the faults, and the incomplete bits, are part of the beautiful whole. "Leave 'em wanting more," after all. And you do, obviously. Do you want to honour the creator? Here's how: Create something beautiful that's all your own. Because of course it will be yours, but it will also have echoes of
everything you love. That's how the magical cycle perpetuates.
The ice bridge calls me.
SING... SING A SONG
News Items:
I was getting off the Metro, something which I like to do quickly. I prefer a brisk walking pace, and getting a jump on everyone means I'm not stuck behind anybody. As I leapt ahead of everyone, there was one guy as fast as me, and I quickly moved to get out of his way. We were never, as it turned out, in any danger of colliding, but I prefer to be sure, so I kinda dodged, then looked over. He hadn't even noticed me. He was singing to himself. Cool. Have you ever noticed some people resent this sort of thing, like a guy enjoying a private moment of music is somehow wrong, or an infringement? I'm not one of these people. I don't understand them. I feel sorry for them. My take is, you wanna sing, go for it. Live like you wanna live. I pull ahead of him, get to the escalator, and I'm about to get onto it, when I see him in my peripheral vision, and my thinking is, "He must be accelerating; I'll get out of his way." So I step aside. He recoils. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you. I was somewhere else." We step onto the escalator, more or less together. "You were singing," I tell him. Hey, he was having fun; I wanted him to know I was vicariously enjoying it. "I was just having a beer with John McHale [of Offenbach]." That was all it, took, really. Two complete strangers standing on the longest Metro escalator in the city, talking Montreal 70s rock bands. At the next escalator, he informs me that he's still got the vibe; he's going to go to the bar across the corner and sing some Karaoke. And d'you know, I almost went with him? You see, this is all it takes. Mutual appreciation of music. Treating strangers like human beings. I know if I ever see this guy again, we're going to smile and nod at each other, and think about April Wine. We part company, and I call as a farewell, "Enjoy the music." He answers, "That's what it's all about, man!" Too right.
Just between you and me.
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