dunmurderin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dunmurderin) wrote2007-06-25 08:43 pm
dunmurderin) wrote2007-06-25 08:43 pm
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Why does badfic happen?
A recent discussion over at the Slash Haven at the Padded Cell, plus countless rants on FFRants as well as the lingering holdovers of Fanfic is Srs Bizness from Strikethrough 2007, have inspired me to blather talk about why badfics happen.
Why do writers feel the need to create stories that are, by the standards of most fans, bad? Why do people feel the need to bend canon like Beckham in order to justify pairings or characterizations or scenarios that are for lack of a more polite term, stupid?
In some cases, it’s because the writer is young and foolish and thinks that they’re the first person to stick the cast of their favorite book/movie/TV show/rock band/etc. in high school. Or the first person to magically fall into the world of [insert fandom] due to [insert reason]. Or that they are the ONLY PERSON in the history of EVER who has created a character who has their name, a lovely singing voice and the ability to warp the plot around them. Oddly enough, some of these young and foolish writers are in their early to mid 30s and 40s.
Sometimes these authors learn better and start worrying about characterization, grammar and logic like the rest of us and their stories improve according to the standards of the community. But sometimes, these authors just continue on doing whatever crazy crack comes into their heads andget hundreds of reviews saying OMG! Write MORE! while more deserving fics get nothing and it’s not @#$#@ FAIR! seem perfectly content to live as heathens among us.
But, why? Why would they do this? Why write stories where the improbable, the impossible and the down right implausible happen? Why drop your authorial pants and moon Lady Logic and Father Canon? Why would anybody write a story where they didn’t take time to run it through their spellchecker, do a line edit themselves before handing it over to a beta-reader to have it checked for grammar, spelling and canon before finally posting it?
The answer, I think, is pretty simple: because they’re having fun doing it. They’re doing it for shits and grins and they really don’t give a good goddamn if meets the standards of a publishable work, they just did it for the sheer hell of it, so whadda you think?
Note: this isn’t to say that people who do take time and effort to make sure their stories are grammatically correct, plausible and logical aren’t having fun. It’s more to say that not everybody approaches the fun of fanfic in the same way and that, to paraphrase Kipling, there are nine and ninety ways of constructing fannish lays (as in ‘laws’) and every single one of them is right.”
“Right” in this case meaning good, in the sense of being suitable for a particular purpose -- i.e. the entertainment of the author and/or others. Sometimes you want to read a well-crafted epic and sometimes you just want something silly, light and entertaining.
Not everybody writes fanfic because they’re practicing so they can write the Great Novel. Not everybody writes fanfic because they MUST write to appease their muses. Not everybody writes fanfic because they’re subverting the dominant paradigm or playing with a form of modern oral literature or claiming a space for women in a heteronormative patriarchy by having Jack Sparrow take it up the ass from Will Turner, Norrington, Davy Jones and the monkey.
Some people just write fanfics for the sheer hell of it. They write what they want to read -- and sometimes what they want to read is, well, bad -- painfully so -- to other readers. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that.
Personally, I think I stand somewhere on the border of “Fanfic is Serious!” and “Fanfiction is Fun”. I write my stories because they’re the kind of stories I want to read but that I don’t often find, but I have a tendency to want those stories to be good (i.e. for other people to enjoy reading them). So, I’m careful with my spelling and my grammar and my attention to details both real and otherwise. I want my stories to be internally consistent and to be consistent with other stories that I’ve written. Getting things right (for a given value of ‘right’) is important to me.
This doesn’t make me any better or any worse than the writer who chugs a bottle of Mountain Dew and a package of Pop Rocks and says “Wouldn’t it be cool if the cast of NCIS were all squirrels!?” Yes, the latter writer will probably never be taken seriously with that sort of an attitude but that really only matters if the writer themselves wants to be taken seriously. If they don’t then, it’s rather like being denied admission to a club you don’t want to belong to.
Why do writers feel the need to create stories that are, by the standards of most fans, bad? Why do people feel the need to bend canon like Beckham in order to justify pairings or characterizations or scenarios that are for lack of a more polite term, stupid?
In some cases, it’s because the writer is young and foolish and thinks that they’re the first person to stick the cast of their favorite book/movie/TV show/rock band/etc. in high school. Or the first person to magically fall into the world of [insert fandom] due to [insert reason]. Or that they are the ONLY PERSON in the history of EVER who has created a character who has their name, a lovely singing voice and the ability to warp the plot around them. Oddly enough, some of these young and foolish writers are in their early to mid 30s and 40s.
Sometimes these authors learn better and start worrying about characterization, grammar and logic like the rest of us and their stories improve according to the standards of the community. But sometimes, these authors just continue on doing whatever crazy crack comes into their heads and
But, why? Why would they do this? Why write stories where the improbable, the impossible and the down right implausible happen? Why drop your authorial pants and moon Lady Logic and Father Canon? Why would anybody write a story where they didn’t take time to run it through their spellchecker, do a line edit themselves before handing it over to a beta-reader to have it checked for grammar, spelling and canon before finally posting it?
The answer, I think, is pretty simple: because they’re having fun doing it. They’re doing it for shits and grins and they really don’t give a good goddamn if meets the standards of a publishable work, they just did it for the sheer hell of it, so whadda you think?
Note: this isn’t to say that people who do take time and effort to make sure their stories are grammatically correct, plausible and logical aren’t having fun. It’s more to say that not everybody approaches the fun of fanfic in the same way and that, to paraphrase Kipling, there are nine and ninety ways of constructing fannish lays (as in ‘laws’) and every single one of them is right.”
“Right” in this case meaning good, in the sense of being suitable for a particular purpose -- i.e. the entertainment of the author and/or others. Sometimes you want to read a well-crafted epic and sometimes you just want something silly, light and entertaining.
Not everybody writes fanfic because they’re practicing so they can write the Great
Some people just write fanfics for the sheer hell of it. They write what they want to read -- and sometimes what they want to read is, well, bad -- painfully so -- to other readers. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that.
Personally, I think I stand somewhere on the border of “Fanfic is Serious!” and “Fanfiction is Fun”. I write my stories because they’re the kind of stories I want to read but that I don’t often find, but I have a tendency to want those stories to be good (i.e. for other people to enjoy reading them). So, I’m careful with my spelling and my grammar and my attention to details both real and otherwise. I want my stories to be internally consistent and to be consistent with other stories that I’ve written. Getting things right (for a given value of ‘right’) is important to me.
This doesn’t make me any better or any worse than the writer who chugs a bottle of Mountain Dew and a package of Pop Rocks and says “Wouldn’t it be cool if the cast of NCIS were all squirrels!?” Yes, the latter writer will probably never be taken seriously with that sort of an attitude but that really only matters if the writer themselves wants to be taken seriously. If they don’t then, it’s rather like being denied admission to a club you don’t want to belong to.
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Then I grew up and got over the need to be 'mature' -- and learned that fanfics could be well-written and that a lot of fanfic writers took the craft of writing just as seriously as original fic writers. Some of the better writing advice sites I've found have been written by fanfic writers trying to help other fanfic writers improve their skills. Hell, some of the fanfic grammar sites out there made concepts I'd never understood clear to me because hey, they were accessable!
This isn't to say that I don't still see fics that make me roll my eyes -- I could be quite happy if I never saw another fic where the minibots were treated as being weaker than the taller Autobots -- but at the end of the day I can walk away from those fics and do my best to write fics where things happen the way I want.
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Uh ... Brawn, anybody? Or am I missing the point?
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People who go for high art in their writing, though? Aren't going to be read by the general public. The general public will reach for the formulaic romance (or fantasy or mystery or sci-fi or whatever) way before they'll reach for your High Art. Just the way it is.
Fanfic writers, on the other hand. Many of them care about their writing. Can't really say the same for a lot of "professional" writers. I tend to respect the amateurs a lot more than the pros, I'm afraid.
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Stephen King released several books under the pseudonym "Richard Bachman" at the request of his publisher because at the time he was churning out so many books he was running the risk of flooding the market. That and the Bachman books weren't the same sort of stories he was writing under 'King'.
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The problem with comparing amateur and pro authors is that the playing field isn't level. Fanfic authors have a lot more freedom than a published author does. Fanfic authors aren't being held to the editorial standards of a magazine or publishing house. Fanfic authors don't have to worry about deadlines. And, like I said above, fanfic authors don't have to worry about pleasing anybody but themselves. If a fanfic author doesn't get reviews or gets an extremely negative review, they might sulk or write a sniffy rant over at FFRants or start a flamewar but their potential livelihood isn't hurt the way it would be if they were trying to sell those fics for money.
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People want a good story. Some writers manage to stumble over a theme or story that is so compelling that it sells in spite of terrible writing. Other bad writers have a brainwashed cult of worshippers purchasing their holy writ. (Yes, I'm talking about L. Ron Hubbard, AND LaHaye & Jenkins).
And then there's some romance editors, who seem to be smoking crack when they should have been tossing the badfic into the round file. Every now and then I see a real stinker in other genre fiction, but I see a LOT of real stinkers in romance fiction. I'm curious as to why. Is the demand just so high that they can't get enough goodfic to fill the publishing schedule? Or is it because some badfic romance writers have an established fanbase that will reliably buy their dreck, so they keep getting published?
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Which is one of the reasons I get annoyed when fanfic authors in particular slam romance novels.