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petroniaNot doing any more of the meme from yesterday because for some reason they all came out wrong, which put me in a temper. :/ Instead I will witter about other things.
I like reading other people's GyouTai fic but I have a problem with writing it myself. It's like I can't feel it. Not in the Watsonian "I just don't grok these characters" sense but in the Doyleist: I have trouble hooking my own ideas up to the canon. So it may be a problem with ficcing for Juuni Kokki in general. With Ono Fuyumi I get the opposite of what I get with Kuwabara Mizuna - the disturbing impression that she thinks nothing like me. She's not dark in the same way as I'd write dark, and she's not twee in the same way as I'd write twee. The issues on which she seems to want to focus aren't the same issues on which I'd focus, given the same basic setup. So I can try to think like her but I have no inner assurance that I wouldn't be shooting miles wide of the mark. (And I do like to aim for the same mark as the author, because if one doesn't sooner or later one wakes up in the morning with one's face in the keyboard and a rant on the monitor re how JKR had to resort to mangling her own characters in order to shoot down the [insert] ship.) Then I thought you know maybe it isn't Ono Fuyumi, it's the bloody anime. But there's no way for me to tell that unless I read the books, and I'm not sure I want to. ^^;
What it comes down to in this particular instance is this: if Gyousou and Taiki don't learn and and evolve from what they were in and of themselves and to each other before everything went to hell in a handbasket, then there would have been no point to everything going to hell in a handbasket other than we-are-all-fortune's-fools h/c. But what was so wrong with them before? ...A lot that I can see, to be honest, but you'd have to descend to that level of hidden inner motivation on which every human being is a bit ugly. Ono's done it, and perhaps she intends to do it again, but I don't know if she'd pass the same judgment on them as I would.
***
EDIT -- Since people are coming through![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom: thoughts continue in the next post. ^^
I gather from the comments that this entry was triggered by an actual instance of one of Pru's fics being put up for detailed litcrit sans permission recently, of which I wasn't aware when I read the entry last night, but I figured as much anyhow. I haven't gone and looked at the thread because I know it'd be an unpleasant experience. I'm glad that she came out and made the statement she did (with grace and caveats at that), despite the fact that as a fanfic author one has about a 1 in 1000 chance of not coming off wanky if one makes a public statement to the effect that one is not always absolutely and effusively grateful to have people telling one what's wrong with one's writing. It's the nature of the beast.
I've never taken a public stance on the matter because I suspect my opinion is too left-field to do anyone any good. XD But since I broached the subject, it is the following: I don't like unsolicited "concrit", and I'm deeply conflicted by and suspicious of beta-reading.
I don't like people telling me what's wrong with my stories because I can't imagine anyone does. What a writer wants is for people to tell other people, intelligently or at the very least enthusiastically and at length, why those other people should read the writer's stories: to wit, because they are awesome. In other words, what a writer wants is a good review so they can hem and haw in a bashful fashion and spend the rest of the evening privately glowing in a corner. (By the way, thanks to everyone who's recced me recently. ^^ I probably saw it and felt too awkward to jump in saying 'hey thanks for reccing me!', but it's uniformly appreciated.) I didn't make this monumental discovery in the field of psychology, nor did fandom - in fact this is such a blindingly obvious truism I don't see why it should be made the polite thing to tack on a line of "...but you could fix this!" at the end of one's FFN review, as it seems to be nowadays. Of course I understand that no one is under an obligation to give me a good review, and of course one might eventually be glad to be told that something is wrong with a story. But it's in the same way as one might be glad as an adult that one's parents were too poor to give one an allowance or didn't speak English well enough to help with one's homework: because it fortifies the character. Plus sometimes the critiquer is just plain wrong. I don't know why people who write fic for fun even bother pretending they're pleased instead of irritated to get critiqued, unless it's that they don't want to be called a wanker. IMHO that's closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, as it's well known already that writers are all wankers. Even published authors have to pretend to be gracious, and everyone can tell it's fake. This is fandom, we should be more free.
Of course, what this comes down to is my parents were too poor to give me an allowance when I was a child and didn't speak English or French well enough to help me with my homework. So I grew up with the conviction that I know better than everyone else, no one can solve my problems except me, and furthermore my problems are no one else's business. In other words, I don't really think your concrit does me any good. If you critique an unfinished draft, it doesn't do me any good because it's not finished, so you're not judging it on a proper basis insofar as I'm concerned. If you critique a completed fic, then it's complete meaning that I like it the way it is, and will see no reason to change it to suit you or the Queen of England. (I completely and profoundly identify with the Tolkien of whom CS Lewis complained, "You cannot make suggestions because he either ignores you or tears the chapter up and rewrites it altogether.") And even if you don't tell me about the problem, in three or six months I will re-read the thing and discover it for myself anyway. I won't be grateful to you for telling me in advance, because you can't convince me - only I can convince myself. If I still don't see it months later, you were wrong.
All of this goes out the window if I think you are as good a writer as I am, or better.
I'm really conflicted by the whole beta-reading process. I don't usually offer my fic up to be beta-read, but I've had drafts beta'd several times at the other person's offer, and I've always loved the result. However, it's always been someone I consider as good a writer as I am or better, and even so I never implemented more than half the suggested changes. If I were beta-reading me I'd feel underappreciated. ^^; I also think that I am personally really arse at betaing other people's stories. Either I am a weenie and limit myself to catching typos and shifting punctuation around, or else I rewrite it as if it were my fic - which is utterly horrific and makes me want to apologize afterward, as if I'd commited a heinous act distantly related to rape. When I read X's story I want to read X's story, not X's beta-reader's story (or I'd be over on that lj). But for all I know this is what other writers want when they ask for their stories to be beta-read, and are glad to get it. If so it would explain why I can tell when I'm reading a story that's been extensively beta-read ("several rounds" is the phrase oft bandied about - how is that even possible?), and why they always seem so airless and plastic. An extensively beta-read fic exudes the opposite of the quality the Japanese call wabisabi. I can't tell you what's wrong with it, there usually isn't anything wrong with it structurally or technically, but it reads like all the soul's been sucked out of it. Like it wasn't written by one specific person with their textual quirks and foibles and hang-ups, but by the anthropomorphic personification of Generic Slash. And I'd much rather read Bad Slash than Generic Slash.
EDIT -- Charmian found me an interesting discussion on the community in question and implications thereof for fandom. If you've read Pru's and my post I suggest you read this one as well.
I like reading other people's GyouTai fic but I have a problem with writing it myself. It's like I can't feel it. Not in the Watsonian "I just don't grok these characters" sense but in the Doyleist: I have trouble hooking my own ideas up to the canon. So it may be a problem with ficcing for Juuni Kokki in general. With Ono Fuyumi I get the opposite of what I get with Kuwabara Mizuna - the disturbing impression that she thinks nothing like me. She's not dark in the same way as I'd write dark, and she's not twee in the same way as I'd write twee. The issues on which she seems to want to focus aren't the same issues on which I'd focus, given the same basic setup. So I can try to think like her but I have no inner assurance that I wouldn't be shooting miles wide of the mark. (And I do like to aim for the same mark as the author, because if one doesn't sooner or later one wakes up in the morning with one's face in the keyboard and a rant on the monitor re how JKR had to resort to mangling her own characters in order to shoot down the [insert] ship.) Then I thought you know maybe it isn't Ono Fuyumi, it's the bloody anime. But there's no way for me to tell that unless I read the books, and I'm not sure I want to. ^^;
What it comes down to in this particular instance is this: if Gyousou and Taiki don't learn and and evolve from what they were in and of themselves and to each other before everything went to hell in a handbasket, then there would have been no point to everything going to hell in a handbasket other than we-are-all-fortune's-fools h/c. But what was so wrong with them before? ...A lot that I can see, to be honest, but you'd have to descend to that level of hidden inner motivation on which every human being is a bit ugly. Ono's done it, and perhaps she intends to do it again, but I don't know if she'd pass the same judgment on them as I would.
***
EDIT -- Since people are coming through
metafandom: thoughts continue in the next post. ^^I gather from the comments that this entry was triggered by an actual instance of one of Pru's fics being put up for detailed litcrit sans permission recently, of which I wasn't aware when I read the entry last night, but I figured as much anyhow. I haven't gone and looked at the thread because I know it'd be an unpleasant experience. I'm glad that she came out and made the statement she did (with grace and caveats at that), despite the fact that as a fanfic author one has about a 1 in 1000 chance of not coming off wanky if one makes a public statement to the effect that one is not always absolutely and effusively grateful to have people telling one what's wrong with one's writing. It's the nature of the beast.
I've never taken a public stance on the matter because I suspect my opinion is too left-field to do anyone any good. XD But since I broached the subject, it is the following: I don't like unsolicited "concrit", and I'm deeply conflicted by and suspicious of beta-reading.
I don't like people telling me what's wrong with my stories because I can't imagine anyone does. What a writer wants is for people to tell other people, intelligently or at the very least enthusiastically and at length, why those other people should read the writer's stories: to wit, because they are awesome. In other words, what a writer wants is a good review so they can hem and haw in a bashful fashion and spend the rest of the evening privately glowing in a corner. (By the way, thanks to everyone who's recced me recently. ^^ I probably saw it and felt too awkward to jump in saying 'hey thanks for reccing me!', but it's uniformly appreciated.) I didn't make this monumental discovery in the field of psychology, nor did fandom - in fact this is such a blindingly obvious truism I don't see why it should be made the polite thing to tack on a line of "...but you could fix this!" at the end of one's FFN review, as it seems to be nowadays. Of course I understand that no one is under an obligation to give me a good review, and of course one might eventually be glad to be told that something is wrong with a story. But it's in the same way as one might be glad as an adult that one's parents were too poor to give one an allowance or didn't speak English well enough to help with one's homework: because it fortifies the character. Plus sometimes the critiquer is just plain wrong. I don't know why people who write fic for fun even bother pretending they're pleased instead of irritated to get critiqued, unless it's that they don't want to be called a wanker. IMHO that's closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, as it's well known already that writers are all wankers. Even published authors have to pretend to be gracious, and everyone can tell it's fake. This is fandom, we should be more free.
Of course, what this comes down to is my parents were too poor to give me an allowance when I was a child and didn't speak English or French well enough to help me with my homework. So I grew up with the conviction that I know better than everyone else, no one can solve my problems except me, and furthermore my problems are no one else's business. In other words, I don't really think your concrit does me any good. If you critique an unfinished draft, it doesn't do me any good because it's not finished, so you're not judging it on a proper basis insofar as I'm concerned. If you critique a completed fic, then it's complete meaning that I like it the way it is, and will see no reason to change it to suit you or the Queen of England. (I completely and profoundly identify with the Tolkien of whom CS Lewis complained, "You cannot make suggestions because he either ignores you or tears the chapter up and rewrites it altogether.") And even if you don't tell me about the problem, in three or six months I will re-read the thing and discover it for myself anyway. I won't be grateful to you for telling me in advance, because you can't convince me - only I can convince myself. If I still don't see it months later, you were wrong.
All of this goes out the window if I think you are as good a writer as I am, or better.
I'm really conflicted by the whole beta-reading process. I don't usually offer my fic up to be beta-read, but I've had drafts beta'd several times at the other person's offer, and I've always loved the result. However, it's always been someone I consider as good a writer as I am or better, and even so I never implemented more than half the suggested changes. If I were beta-reading me I'd feel underappreciated. ^^; I also think that I am personally really arse at betaing other people's stories. Either I am a weenie and limit myself to catching typos and shifting punctuation around, or else I rewrite it as if it were my fic - which is utterly horrific and makes me want to apologize afterward, as if I'd commited a heinous act distantly related to rape. When I read X's story I want to read X's story, not X's beta-reader's story (or I'd be over on that lj). But for all I know this is what other writers want when they ask for their stories to be beta-read, and are glad to get it. If so it would explain why I can tell when I'm reading a story that's been extensively beta-read ("several rounds" is the phrase oft bandied about - how is that even possible?), and why they always seem so airless and plastic. An extensively beta-read fic exudes the opposite of the quality the Japanese call wabisabi. I can't tell you what's wrong with it, there usually isn't anything wrong with it structurally or technically, but it reads like all the soul's been sucked out of it. Like it wasn't written by one specific person with their textual quirks and foibles and hang-ups, but by the anthropomorphic personification of Generic Slash. And I'd much rather read Bad Slash than Generic Slash.
EDIT -- Charmian found me an interesting discussion on the community in question and implications thereof for fandom. If you've read Pru's and my post I suggest you read this one as well.
