Meta: Blathering about fics.

[dunmurderin]

Okay, so I stumbled across this rant over at fanficrants and for some reason it made me want to do accountancy of the fics I've done, more out of curiosity than anything else. Soo, I grabbed a pen, made a very unscientific chart on a piece of paper and counted fics.



Out of the seventy-nine fics I've written (and believe me, I had a couple minutes pause when I realized I've somehow written seventy-nine fics):

• Twenty-seven are romance fics (romance, in this case, being any fic with even a remote suggestion of two characters being a couple or having any romantic interest in each other and/or any fic with smexings in it). This includes slash and het fics.
  
• Forty-four are gen fics (gen being any fic that doesn't have romance/sex in it but that also doesn't have action in the sense of combat).
  
• Eight are fics are action stories (action being any fic that has something resembling combat or fighting in it -- like I said, this is entirely unscientific.)
  

What's this mean? Other than I have wayyyy too much time on my hands? Nothing much -- though it does seem that stories that aren't about heavy action-adventure scenarios are easier to write. My GI Joe/Transformers crossover is in large part stalled because it is an action-intensive piece and I'm trying my damnedest to portray it as realistically as possible. Romance and Gen stories are easier to write because they're based around things I've done or experienced. I can knock them off at work with just a dictionary and my TFU/MTMTE books for reference. Action-adventure stories require more intense plotting and research (then again, "Skyline Ridge" took almost longer to research than it did to write, largely because it took me an hour to find out when the memorial featured in it was built).

I was honestly surprised, since I thought the romance numbers would be higher, possibly more equal to the gen numbers (particularly since I stacked the deck in the interests of, I dunno, 'fairness' or something). The combat fics are possibly skewed a little low since some of the fics that ended up being 'gen' are probably more accurately 'action' and at least one of the 'romance' fics could also be considered an action or a gen piece ("The Soldier" got stuck over in romance because Tailgate and Kup talk about sex even though the action takes place in the middle of a battle -- again, not scientific and done at 6am so yeah...).

On the whole, I partly agree with emperorsteele that romance sometimes gets too much emphasis in action-adventure fandoms (this did occassionally drive me nuts in GI Joe fandom, particularly as concerned the female characters; Elita-1 and the Autobot femmes could have a nice cup of commisseration with the women of GI Joe) but fanfics aren't meant to be an accurate portrayal of the canon world. They're the place we go to for the stories we want to see, but that aren't being told. Yeah, it can seem like the Action-Adventure MacGuffin -- be it a war, or an enemy organization or the Cylons or whoever -- is being ignored in favor of sex and emo but combat doesn't happen 24/7. And fight scenes can get just as old and tired as romance scenes just as fast.

I've mentioned before that I watch CBS shows on line off their Innertube site. I've recently started watching episodes of "The Unit" which is a show about Delta Force a fictionalized special operations group. I watched one of the extra bits on the CBS website about how the show came about and the guy who wrote the book the show is based on said that they pitched the show as something that would not only focus on the guys out in the field but also on their wives and girlfriends back home. After the pitch meeting, the guy who agreed to buy the show said that the reason he bought it was because they had that dual focus. If the show had just been about the combat, it would have been a no-go.

Characters do have lives outside the battle and those lives can be just as interesting as yet another fight scene. And...yeah, that's all I got. It's bed time.

Dun.

Comments

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the very topic of that rant came up in my LJ before.

Personally, I think there should be a balance (the characters have lives outside combat, but they do also have combat and can't be in bed and/or emoing about relationships 24/7), but I can also understand why people would concentrate on the relationships/sex, for the reasons already mentioned.

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I would like to see more of a balance in stories -- particularly in the ones I write. I like non-fluffy pieces, but like sapphirebreeze said, it's tougher to come up with a plot for an extended piece.

I think it's possible to do a character-driven action story. Personally, if I don't care about the characters, the fireworks aren't necessarily going to keep me interested. Case in point, we went to see Ghost Rider last night and, let's face it, you can't get more cheeseball than the Devil's bounty hunter complete with flaming skull. But part of what made the movie work for me was that the movie sold me on the character of Johnny Blaze. I cared about Johnny, I sympathized with him and I wanted to see him succeed.

On the other hand, the fact that romance in action fandoms annoys people like emperorsteele makes me want to write ooey-gooey romance fics just to piss 'em off. Childish, I know. Mine is an evil laugh. Bwah.

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible to do a character-driven action story.

I wouldn't just say "possible", but "necessary", for the very reason you mentioned. Even if the story is all about the action, the characters have to be interesting enough to carry the plot. You care more about a character you sympathise with getting blown up than you'd care about third redshirt from the right getting blown up, no?

On the other hand, the fact that romance in action fandoms annoys people like emperorsteele makes me want to write ooey-gooey romance fics just to piss 'em off.

Oh, I know exactly what you mean! Even more so since... I'm not excusing emperorsteele, in specific, of misogyny, but when I see male fans go, "Why all the goopy romance in action fandoms?" I do sometimes wonder how much of that reaction has to do with the fact that goopy romance is something that's traditionally coded 'female'.

Yes, I'm stereotyping here, but there is the idea that romance is "girl stuff" and a "real man" wouldn't be caught dead watching a chick flick, no? So I'm wondering how much of this is about that - "Don't make our Gundam Wing/Transformers/G.I. Joe into a chick flick! It's for boys about the action and big manly explosions, dangit! Don't get your estrogen-saturated fangirl slobber all over it!"

And that makes me defiant. I am woman, hear me write sappy slash! Mwah.