FIC: was Re: [LMB] Re: Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, quietann wrote:

> On 1/3/07, Azalais Aranxta <tiamat at tsoft.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, quietann wrote:
> >
> > > From what I've seen poking around LJ, this is a very common
> > > reaction WRT fanfic based on Bujold's books.  Or people
> > > will be very critical of anyone who does not capture
> > > "Bujold style" in their works.
> >
> > That seems unfair to me, because really, you cannot expect a
> > fic writer--even a good one--to write with the same style as
> > a published author.  The fic writer's style may be just as
> > good but it won't really be the same.
>
> I have run across a few people who've managed to capture
> Bujold's voice (or at the very least have a similar writing
> style).  I am *not* one of them. At all.

I don't think many people can write in a lot of different writing
styles, though.  Even John M Ford who was a master of practically
every prose and poetic form ever written had a style that was
distinctively his own.  There are a lot of people who need to
understand that writing fanfiction is not an exercise in
consciously attempting to imitate someone, which usually sounds
ridiculous.

> > (My motivation for writing fanfic may ostensibly be filling in
> > missing pieces of canon or addressing some imbalance I see in
> > canon, but the actual motivation is always this:  a character
> > who, technically, doesn't belong to me has got into my head and
> > will not shut up and is telling me stories and demanding I write
> > them.
>
> Same here, largely.  I've woken up in the morning with my head
> full of stories, and I've gone to bed at night with Gregor or
> Aral or Ges (!) talking to me.  And if it's strong enough, I'll
> write down what they have to say.

And yet, you must on some level feel, if they're talking to you
the way your own characters would (assuming you write original
fiction), that there is something that needs to be said that
wasn't said in canon and isn't likely to be.

Otherwise, why would this be happening?

I know that Sam and and Edward and Draco and Mara and all of the
others I did not create feel (and hence that I on some level
feel) that something they need to say is not being said.

> > Not only does the Vorkosiverse not generate a lot of slash,
> > it also does not generate a lot of villainfic.  That is to
> > say, I have not noticed a lot of fanfiction of any of Lois'
> > works that purports to be from the POV of the Designated Bad
> > Guys.
> >
> > There are three types of villainfic...  There are the people who
> > like Bad Guys *because* they are bad.
>
> Maybe it's just that Lois's readers tend to be a pretty mature lot.

Yes, but is everyone who writes "Evil has the best costumes" fic
immature?  A lot of them are--they're the same people who walk
around in black with inverted pentagrams to p*ss off their
parents and annoy serious left-hand-path occultists *no end*--but
I doubt that they all are.

> And even her evil characters have enough backstory that it's
> clear that they are not "Designated Bad Guys" in any shallow
> sense.  Think Ges. Ryoval/Lily/Georish.  Even Cavilo.  The
> closest Lois gets to a "bad guy" IMHO is Metzov, and much of
> his badness is that he's just plain apesh*t crazy.

I think my whole point was that Lois is not a shallow writer.
Her work is constructed in such a way that you don't
have the large number of people sympathising with the opposition
the way you do in say, Harry Potter fandom *because* she is not a
shallow writer, and hence, it is obvious to most people that her
villains (for want of a better word) are human beings with
reasons for what they do that they think are good ones, and also,
that they are dead wrong about that, and that her good guys are
human beings who are not perfect and occasionally screw up,
sometimes phenomenally, yet whose intentions are almost always
good, and that the world will in fact be a better place if they
'win'.

This isn't true of say, JK Rowling.  There is a large contingent
of people in that fandom who have made reasoned and reasonable
arguments to the effect that while Dumbledore is not a (now
canonically insane from birth and possibly before) mass murdering
psychotic like Lord Voldemort, his Ideal World is probably not
actually a pleasant or just place to be, and that choosing his
side is definitely a lesser-of-two-evils proposition.

(I am not willing to go into the specifics of this on this list
or in any other public place; I refuse to serve as a chewtoy for
Rowling's reason-impervious drooling fanpoodles any longer.  Nor
do I wish to rehash this in private email--if you really want my
versions of the arguments, my livejournal archive would be the
place to look, because I'm DONE with that.)

> > There are the people who like to play Devil's Advocate,
> > literally.  (I have fallen into this contingent in many fandoms.)
> > They think that the Bad Guys Have Some Points, and that the good
> > guys aren't as Good as they like to think they are.  Some of them
> > will write fanfiction that inverts authorial intent, and some of
> > them will write fanfiction from a perspective where everyone's
> > kind of morally ambiguous.
>
> This is where I've fallen, most of the time.  Certainly the Ges/Aral I have
> written is exactly this.  Ges isn't just this sociopathic, manipulative
> hedonist; he's also *smart* and dare I say it a bit sensitive.

You can dare say it.  I might even admit that one has to be a bit
sensitive to hurt people that efficiently.  I don't think he's
less bad than Lois makes him out to be, though; probably because
Lois doesn't try to tell me what to think of him (unlike Rowling)
but shows me his appalling behaviour and lets me decide for
myself that he's a manipulative sociopath.

> And Aral (especially as a young man) isn't all heroic; he's
> also anxious and perhaps a wee bit insane, especially after his
> first wife dies.

Well, yes :)

> I take mostly the latter position -- that no one is All Good or
> All Bad, or even Mostly Good or Mostly Bad;

See, I agree that no-one is all good or all bad.  But I
definitely think there are people who are mostly good or mostly
bad.  (I just happen to think that Albus Dumbledore, frex, is
mostly bad, and in a way that masquerades as good very
convincingly.)  Ges strikes me as mostly bad.  There may be very
good reasons why he is mostly bad, and he may be a sad example of
a human being who has led a painful life, but his effect on the
people around him, which is what matters, is mostly bad.

> > There may be some Redemption fic out there; I know some people
> > who have the occasional temptation to humanise say, Ges, or
> > Cavilo.  But I've not seen it.
>
> Very odd.  I found it extremely easy to humanize Ges, but I
> can't imagine doing that with Cavilo.  Maybe it's just a
> failure of imagination.

I would actually guess you as being somewhere on the continuum
between Devil's Advocate and Redeemer with Ges, though if you
were really a Redeemer you'd write a Ges fic where Ges found True
Love with one of Our Heroes and his entire personality changed
for the better.

When I was active in the HP fandom, I was a Devil's Advocate and
a Malfoy fan.  Redeemed!Draco fics used to turn my stomach,
because 9 times out of 10, Draco would suddenly renounce all his
previous beliefs at once and practically swear himself to
Dumbledore (much as Redeemers tend to believe Snape has
done--DA's tend to think Snape killing Dumbledore was something
that he should have done like, 10 years ago, and many of us
really hope it doesn't turn out to be something Bumblebore
asked him to do...)

> > Reading Lois may leave me with a lot of ideas racing through
> > my mind and the urge to go Write Something, but it doesn't
> > leave me feeling that there's something more that needs to be
> > said that the author will never say because s/he is unwilling
> > or unable to acknowledge it.  None of her characters ever
> > take up residence in my brain and refuse to shut up till I
> > tell their side, or the whole truth, because Lois is already
> > doing that.
>
> Absolutely.  In my case, I'll write it anyway, but it's mostly for my own
> satisfaction.

Do you really feel that way, after everything you've said about
Ges?  Just curious.

~malfoy :)

****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley