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fangrrl_squees) wrote2006-09-11 07:45 pm
fangrrl_squees) wrote2006-09-11 07:45 pm
Can't Sleep, Characters Will Eat Me - From Elsewhere (1)
Fan fiction's an occasional - very occasional - vice of mine. Actually, I don't think I've written any fanfic in at least five years, unless you count the stuff where I blatantly steal a little bit of someone else's work and then jam it into some totally other setting - in which case, the break has been only a couple of years.
Anyways...
I dabbled in the usual genres, but never got really stuck in like those people writing Potter-fic that is such a well-honed impersonation of JKR that you start to wonder if she isn't posting extraneous ideas under a pseudonym. I'm quite the opposite, in fact. I enjoy a movie or TV show - rarely is it a book - and decide that I want to play with the characters a bit, but not all that much. Usually, whatever I want to say has already been said in a much better way than I could ever manage, so why spend the time when there are so many other ways to be a silly little bean? So I've written a bit of Doctor Who fic, here, a bit of Buffy fic there. I think there's even a torrid bit of Riker slash penned during my high-school days still floating around in my archival boxes of stuff.
The very first bit of fanfic I ever wrote was for one of those shows that, honestly, has often been improved by a good ficcing: Blake's 7 1.
I was 12, maybe 13 at the time so, naturally, the story was dreck. It was a Mary-Sue long before I'd heard the term - although I still console myself with the fact that I put my avatar-self in as a second banana, and a highly unreliable one at that - and churned out with only a passing idea of maintaining apt character behavior, paying attention to canon, etc. Mind you, it's not like B7 was ever some multifaceted examination of the human psyche, but I digress.
The story was damned silly, but I had fun writing it, and the few fellow ficcers I found online (this was in the 1980s, kids, the 'net was smaller back then) enjoyed it. Of course, they were young teens, too, and therefore also almost completely devoid of taste. But I was happy with the story at the time and, even after a few years passed and I shrieked in horror at what I found on a dusty 3.5" floppy, I had a certain abiding fondness for it. Heck, I even kept it tucked away on a corner of my HD where I could look at it whenever I brimmed with overconfidence - my little way of keeping myself humble, you see. As ever, today's brilliance is tomorrow's embarassment.
So, why am I even mentioning it, now? Because it's occurred to me to rewrite the bloody thing. Yes, really.
On the one hand, it undermines the whole "leave it as crap, it keeps you humble" bit. On the other hand - as "they" are wont to say - no creative endeavor is ever finished, merely abandoned. Or, in my case, stuffed into a metaphorical drawer and occasionally glanced at. So it took me over 20 years to think about a second draft. People who know me aren't surprised by that sort of procrastination on my part.
After listening to ideas and snippets of dialogue in my head for the past two weeks - hence the subject of this post - I've decided that I'm going to at least outline the new ideas. Maybe if I get them down on paper, that'll suffice. Maybe I won't really have to spend all that time re-writing a story that no more than a dozen people have read in the first place. However, I fear the worst. It's going to become some damfool time-sink which no-one will read (I doubt I'll share it. I have some shame) and yet I'll still feel compelled to write the entire damn thing. And then I'll get ideas for sequels...
I tell you, if I could get half the ideas for original work as I do for this derivative junk...
So, brace yourself, kids, as upcoming posts are going to heavily feature my going on about ths character-bit or that. Context might or might not be provided.
I'll admit, I'm not minding the excuse to re-watch the TV show. It's been years and, by god, it's still as inadvertantly hilarious as it ever was. Don't get me wrong, I like the show, warts and all, but it's definitely warty...
1Yes, I know the show credits were written Blakes 7 (no apostrophe) but I'm not sacrificing grammar for the sake of versimilitude.
Anyways...
I dabbled in the usual genres, but never got really stuck in like those people writing Potter-fic that is such a well-honed impersonation of JKR that you start to wonder if she isn't posting extraneous ideas under a pseudonym. I'm quite the opposite, in fact. I enjoy a movie or TV show - rarely is it a book - and decide that I want to play with the characters a bit, but not all that much. Usually, whatever I want to say has already been said in a much better way than I could ever manage, so why spend the time when there are so many other ways to be a silly little bean? So I've written a bit of Doctor Who fic, here, a bit of Buffy fic there. I think there's even a torrid bit of Riker slash penned during my high-school days still floating around in my archival boxes of stuff.
The very first bit of fanfic I ever wrote was for one of those shows that, honestly, has often been improved by a good ficcing: Blake's 7 1.
I was 12, maybe 13 at the time so, naturally, the story was dreck. It was a Mary-Sue long before I'd heard the term - although I still console myself with the fact that I put my avatar-self in as a second banana, and a highly unreliable one at that - and churned out with only a passing idea of maintaining apt character behavior, paying attention to canon, etc. Mind you, it's not like B7 was ever some multifaceted examination of the human psyche, but I digress.
The story was damned silly, but I had fun writing it, and the few fellow ficcers I found online (this was in the 1980s, kids, the 'net was smaller back then) enjoyed it. Of course, they were young teens, too, and therefore also almost completely devoid of taste. But I was happy with the story at the time and, even after a few years passed and I shrieked in horror at what I found on a dusty 3.5" floppy, I had a certain abiding fondness for it. Heck, I even kept it tucked away on a corner of my HD where I could look at it whenever I brimmed with overconfidence - my little way of keeping myself humble, you see. As ever, today's brilliance is tomorrow's embarassment.
So, why am I even mentioning it, now? Because it's occurred to me to rewrite the bloody thing. Yes, really.
On the one hand, it undermines the whole "leave it as crap, it keeps you humble" bit. On the other hand - as "they" are wont to say - no creative endeavor is ever finished, merely abandoned. Or, in my case, stuffed into a metaphorical drawer and occasionally glanced at. So it took me over 20 years to think about a second draft. People who know me aren't surprised by that sort of procrastination on my part.
After listening to ideas and snippets of dialogue in my head for the past two weeks - hence the subject of this post - I've decided that I'm going to at least outline the new ideas. Maybe if I get them down on paper, that'll suffice. Maybe I won't really have to spend all that time re-writing a story that no more than a dozen people have read in the first place. However, I fear the worst. It's going to become some damfool time-sink which no-one will read (I doubt I'll share it. I have some shame) and yet I'll still feel compelled to write the entire damn thing. And then I'll get ideas for sequels...
I tell you, if I could get half the ideas for original work as I do for this derivative junk...
So, brace yourself, kids, as upcoming posts are going to heavily feature my going on about ths character-bit or that. Context might or might not be provided.
I'll admit, I'm not minding the excuse to re-watch the TV show. It's been years and, by god, it's still as inadvertantly hilarious as it ever was. Don't get me wrong, I like the show, warts and all, but it's definitely warty...
1Yes, I know the show credits were written Blakes 7 (no apostrophe) but I'm not sacrificing grammar for the sake of versimilitude.