So, I am writing this little dirty bit of fan fiction. And. Frankly. It's pissing me off. Some things take longer to write than others. Some things are mad complicated. And some things are just downright annoying. It doesn't help that everything has to be right by my standard. When I say that, I don't mean the writing has to be flawless and perfect--I couldn't judge that if I wanted to, and I tend to make hilarious mistakes that I find later. What has to be 'right' is the feel of the thing.
These two people really like each other. However, they both have hostile, combative personalities to some degree. I've never been one to make people do things--which, sorta, flies in the face of writing. These two are difficult to maneuver. And, I suppose, my concern with them isn't even them. It is that I won't finish the story and find out what happens in the end. That's a terrible place to be. I have several stories like that, fanfic or original, with characters that I really like--unfinished. It's like watching a good movie half way through. Here's to hoping that I finish this one and find out how it turns out. And, since I have to talk about something in this space in a reasonably regular fashion, I'll talk about what it means when I say that I enjoy writing fanfiction.
REASONS I LOVE DIS STUFF
Writing original fiction is a lawless places, and, normally, I enjoy living in that space a lot. There, I set up the rules. In a life that has been set up for me, with rules I do not often agree with but am forced to comply with, within the realm of writing I am free. I make the rules. The sky is whatever color that I say that it is. The trees are the size that I want them to be. I can eliminate racial prejudice or accelerate it. In my worlds, gender and sexuality may or may not matter. A lot of people say that writers have a god complex. I disagree with the arrogance implied in a god complex. I don't like the world as it is. I color it in ways that I can understand and that make sense to me. My motivation is desperation, not ego. That is why I write. You will rarely catch me penning original contemporary stuff unless asked/forced. I just don't care for it, and I leave that kind of thing to other people better suited to the task.
The lawless land of originality is tempered by fanfiction. Fanfiction, by it's very nature, is not an original piece of work. Here are lands with carefully constructed rules already in place. The difference is, I like the worlds, and I can choose to linger about in them. The characters are people already. Every once in a while, I can deepen their personas, but I can't change them. Herein, lies the challenge in writing fanfiction.
Do not alter the world unreasonably.
Do not alter the character of someone else's creation.
Having read a lot of fanfiction prior to writing it, I can honestly say that most of the writers do not adhere to the couple of rules set above. Of the two, the second one, I have found, is the most damning. If an author sets up a character's personality in a certain way, and you love that character enough to write about him/her, what is the point of changing their character? The person becomes different, unrecognizable as themselves, and the story changes from something of an homage to something maddening and laughable.
I think of it like a test personally--a test with rules that determine pass or fail. The rules are the construct of the world and the people I am working with. To fail, is to alter them. To pass, is to sneak a story into that world that could have believably happened within it. It is, in this way, harder than being original. And I love that. The challenge.
In the end, it's only really about how one plays the game.
_____
A friend recently reminded me of this song, and since I definitely feel like this, this miserably plagued kind of night, I'm gonna put it up.
Thank you, Jamie.
You see me now
A veteran
Of a thousand psychic wars
I've been living on the edge so long
Where the winds of limbo roar
And I'm young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I'm not sure that there's anything left of me
Sidenote: to say that I don't know who put Light Yagami's uber-sexy, murderous ass in that there dress. But, if that person happens upon this and wants me to credit them all they have to do is say so.
I can't draw. I don't take photographs/paint. etc. All the work of other marvelous people.
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