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edenfallingIt interests me that while I am very sensitive to Christianity when writing Narnia fanfiction -- I try to respect the source text and not be deliberately offensive, while still being true to my own religious views -- I have no similar compunctions when writing Angel Sanctuary fanfic, though that series is even more explicitly grounded in Christian theology and spiritual cosmology.
This is, almost certainly, because Angel Sanctuary itself tramples all over orthodox Christianity (it is, depending on your viewpoint, a sneaky illustration of Gnosticism, flat-out blasphemy, or just Kaori Yuki messing around with the trappings of Christianity because she finds them interesting and pretty), whereas Narnia plays Christianity relatively straight (despite the canonical validation of polytheism in various forms -- e.g. Bacchus, Silenus, and the river god in Prince Caspian, or Tash in The Last Battle... though I grant you, Tash may have been meant more as an analogue of Satan than a more neutral pagan god).
Um. Where was I? Right, so the difference in my attitude toward religion in those two series is based on the way religion is treated in their respective canons. This is because I think that fanfiction ought to, generally speaking, respect the guidelines laid out by canon, whether explicit (names and dates, rules of magic, the events chronicled on the page) or implicit (things like, oh... Uzumaki Naruto is a catalyst who makes people want to be better than they are; or Harry Potter is not going to learn martial arts and go assassinate Voldemort with a machine gun; or a post-manga story in which Setsuna and Sara are separated and punished because of the incestuous nature of their relationship is counter to the intent of Angel Sanctuary, which is to give them a happy ending).
All AU fanfiction (...actually, in some senses, any fanfiction) denies one or more aspects of canon. I find that I can deal much more easily with stories that deny or change explicit canon while keeping most implicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Cedric didn't die at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, or a story in which Naruto succeeded in bringing Sasuke back from the Valley of the End -- than with stories that deny or change implicit canon while keeping most explicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Naruto condemns and gives up on Sasuke instead of trying to redeem him, or a story about how Setsuna ought to give Sara up and love Kurai or Kira instead because incest is an unforgivable sin. I think this is because I view explicit canon as a product of implicit canon: character traits and the moral underpinnings of the world drive the plot, not vice versa. So for me, beyond certain basics like character names, I find implicit canon more important than explicit canon, and I try my best to be faithful to a series's implicit rules even if (or maybe especially if) I throw aside some of the explicit canon.
But. What happens if you find certain elements of implicit canon morally awkward or even reprehensible? Say, for example, that I find the marginalization and demonization of Slytherin extremely awkward when set against J. K. Rowling's general theme that prejudice is wrong? It's clearly the implicit intent (conscious or not) of canon to say that Slytherins are cowardly, unpleasant, and almost without exception irredeemable. Also, the wizarding world has a broken justice system, where guilt and innocence are determined by popularity and influence rather than the rule of law. And the narrative valorizes or denounces behavior based not on its objective impact and moral value, but on which 'side' the character belongs to. For example, Ginny can get away with hexing people at Quidditch matches; Draco could not. Harry can get away with using the Cruciatus curse over a petty insult to Professor McGonagall; if a Slytherin did something similar, I bet you anything he or she would end up in Azkaban.
Or say that I think Masashi Kishimoto is finking out of showing the full implications of the ninja society he's created in Naruto -- he has children who start learning to kill at age six or seven, and who become active ninjas at age twelve. They are hired to guard people, or assassinate people, or retrieve objects, without much regard for the morality of their actions, so long as their employers' money is good. Kishimoto has avoided dealing with the ethical implications by having his 'good' ninjas spend most of their time fighting various groups of 'evil' ninjas whose goals are unquestionably evil... but I think this is cheating.
Or, to come back to my starting point, say that I find Aslan's actions in The Last Battle absolutely reprehensible and unjustifiable under any terms. In all the previous books, when calamity has come to Narnia, he has stepped in as a literal deus ex machina to help the protagonists save the day. Now he refuses to step in at all -- compare his near total absence from Tirian's struggle to his ubiquity in, say The Horse and His Boy or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where he appeared to help the protagonists through even minor troubles they could have solved on their own. And when he finally does deign to appear, he says, in effect, "Game over; I'm tired of Narnia, so I'm taking my favorite pets and going home. Sucks to be you!"
The Last Battle is not a novel. It is a treatise on the powerlessness of humanity before God, and an attempt to portray a glimpse of a physical, Christian heaven. It works very well on those two levels. But it feels like a betrayal of the beautiful, living world C. S. Lewis created in his six previous books, and its theology is utterly alien to my understanding of the universe.
(If you are wondering, I do not believe in any spiritual realm or spiritual beings. I do not believe in souls in the technical sense, though I use the word metaphorically to mean a person's best or essential self. I believe that we are all in this world together and this life is the only life we get, so we had damn well better love each other and respect each other and take care of this world and treat the universe with reverence because it's awesome, in both the old and new senses of the word. I believe that our bodies return to the world from which they were created, just as our world will one day return to dust and ashes, and maybe, billions of years from now, become part of a new star. I believe that good is anything that helps another person and evil is anything that harms another person, and that we ought to ask people whether they feel hurt instead of deciding for them. And I believe that if you take responsibility for something, you can't just decide, unilaterally, to quit without at least listening to everyone your decision will affect.)
I love Narnia. It taught me about honor and trust, humility and responsibility, love and longing. It taught me that one can attempt to live up to a shining ideal -- such as, say, liberty and justice for all -- even if that ideal may not be true in practice and may be impossible to make true in practice.
But I cannot make the Narnia I love square with The Last Battle, in which Aslan turns his back on his responsibility to the land he created, in which he condemns so many to eternal death or torment (the ones who swerved aside into his shadow rather than come in through the stable door), in which dying young is somehow considered a better fate than living and loving and doing good in this world, which is the only world we know for certain that we will get.
In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis paraphrases Hwin to this effect: "If you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike." I would like to add that while you live, you always have the chance to do good, but once you're dead, you're useless.
...
So if you want to write fanfiction for a series, but you cannot accept its implicit rules, what do you do? When are you allowed to turn and, in effect, say to the author whose work you are using, "I'm sorry, but you did this wrong. This is how it should be"? That feels, to me, extremely arrogant -- it's one thing to criticise a work of art, but another entirely to take it and create something that relies utterly on that first work for its existence and context, yet which denies the basic premise of that first work. It's one thing to read a book that flubs its treatment of prejudice and justice and decide to write a book that doesn't flub them; it's a different thing to essentially rewrite the first book with different themes.
And yet, I am writing Harry Potter fanfiction that creates Slytherin characters whom I hope are understandable and sometimes even sympathetic, and who, if they lived to the climax of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would not have stood by and done nothing. I am writing Naruto fanfiction that attempts to unpick and criticize the ethics of the shinobi system.
I have a terrible feeling I am going to end up writing Narnia fanfiction that attempts to redo The Last Battle with a theology of life instead of a theology of death.
...
*headdesk*
This is, almost certainly, because Angel Sanctuary itself tramples all over orthodox Christianity (it is, depending on your viewpoint, a sneaky illustration of Gnosticism, flat-out blasphemy, or just Kaori Yuki messing around with the trappings of Christianity because she finds them interesting and pretty), whereas Narnia plays Christianity relatively straight (despite the canonical validation of polytheism in various forms -- e.g. Bacchus, Silenus, and the river god in Prince Caspian, or Tash in The Last Battle... though I grant you, Tash may have been meant more as an analogue of Satan than a more neutral pagan god).
Um. Where was I? Right, so the difference in my attitude toward religion in those two series is based on the way religion is treated in their respective canons. This is because I think that fanfiction ought to, generally speaking, respect the guidelines laid out by canon, whether explicit (names and dates, rules of magic, the events chronicled on the page) or implicit (things like, oh... Uzumaki Naruto is a catalyst who makes people want to be better than they are; or Harry Potter is not going to learn martial arts and go assassinate Voldemort with a machine gun; or a post-manga story in which Setsuna and Sara are separated and punished because of the incestuous nature of their relationship is counter to the intent of Angel Sanctuary, which is to give them a happy ending).
All AU fanfiction (...actually, in some senses, any fanfiction) denies one or more aspects of canon. I find that I can deal much more easily with stories that deny or change explicit canon while keeping most implicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Cedric didn't die at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, or a story in which Naruto succeeded in bringing Sasuke back from the Valley of the End -- than with stories that deny or change implicit canon while keeping most explicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Naruto condemns and gives up on Sasuke instead of trying to redeem him, or a story about how Setsuna ought to give Sara up and love Kurai or Kira instead because incest is an unforgivable sin. I think this is because I view explicit canon as a product of implicit canon: character traits and the moral underpinnings of the world drive the plot, not vice versa. So for me, beyond certain basics like character names, I find implicit canon more important than explicit canon, and I try my best to be faithful to a series's implicit rules even if (or maybe especially if) I throw aside some of the explicit canon.
But. What happens if you find certain elements of implicit canon morally awkward or even reprehensible? Say, for example, that I find the marginalization and demonization of Slytherin extremely awkward when set against J. K. Rowling's general theme that prejudice is wrong? It's clearly the implicit intent (conscious or not) of canon to say that Slytherins are cowardly, unpleasant, and almost without exception irredeemable. Also, the wizarding world has a broken justice system, where guilt and innocence are determined by popularity and influence rather than the rule of law. And the narrative valorizes or denounces behavior based not on its objective impact and moral value, but on which 'side' the character belongs to. For example, Ginny can get away with hexing people at Quidditch matches; Draco could not. Harry can get away with using the Cruciatus curse over a petty insult to Professor McGonagall; if a Slytherin did something similar, I bet you anything he or she would end up in Azkaban.
Or say that I think Masashi Kishimoto is finking out of showing the full implications of the ninja society he's created in Naruto -- he has children who start learning to kill at age six or seven, and who become active ninjas at age twelve. They are hired to guard people, or assassinate people, or retrieve objects, without much regard for the morality of their actions, so long as their employers' money is good. Kishimoto has avoided dealing with the ethical implications by having his 'good' ninjas spend most of their time fighting various groups of 'evil' ninjas whose goals are unquestionably evil... but I think this is cheating.
Or, to come back to my starting point, say that I find Aslan's actions in The Last Battle absolutely reprehensible and unjustifiable under any terms. In all the previous books, when calamity has come to Narnia, he has stepped in as a literal deus ex machina to help the protagonists save the day. Now he refuses to step in at all -- compare his near total absence from Tirian's struggle to his ubiquity in, say The Horse and His Boy or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where he appeared to help the protagonists through even minor troubles they could have solved on their own. And when he finally does deign to appear, he says, in effect, "Game over; I'm tired of Narnia, so I'm taking my favorite pets and going home. Sucks to be you!"
The Last Battle is not a novel. It is a treatise on the powerlessness of humanity before God, and an attempt to portray a glimpse of a physical, Christian heaven. It works very well on those two levels. But it feels like a betrayal of the beautiful, living world C. S. Lewis created in his six previous books, and its theology is utterly alien to my understanding of the universe.
(If you are wondering, I do not believe in any spiritual realm or spiritual beings. I do not believe in souls in the technical sense, though I use the word metaphorically to mean a person's best or essential self. I believe that we are all in this world together and this life is the only life we get, so we had damn well better love each other and respect each other and take care of this world and treat the universe with reverence because it's awesome, in both the old and new senses of the word. I believe that our bodies return to the world from which they were created, just as our world will one day return to dust and ashes, and maybe, billions of years from now, become part of a new star. I believe that good is anything that helps another person and evil is anything that harms another person, and that we ought to ask people whether they feel hurt instead of deciding for them. And I believe that if you take responsibility for something, you can't just decide, unilaterally, to quit without at least listening to everyone your decision will affect.)
I love Narnia. It taught me about honor and trust, humility and responsibility, love and longing. It taught me that one can attempt to live up to a shining ideal -- such as, say, liberty and justice for all -- even if that ideal may not be true in practice and may be impossible to make true in practice.
But I cannot make the Narnia I love square with The Last Battle, in which Aslan turns his back on his responsibility to the land he created, in which he condemns so many to eternal death or torment (the ones who swerved aside into his shadow rather than come in through the stable door), in which dying young is somehow considered a better fate than living and loving and doing good in this world, which is the only world we know for certain that we will get.
In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis paraphrases Hwin to this effect: "If you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike." I would like to add that while you live, you always have the chance to do good, but once you're dead, you're useless.
...
So if you want to write fanfiction for a series, but you cannot accept its implicit rules, what do you do? When are you allowed to turn and, in effect, say to the author whose work you are using, "I'm sorry, but you did this wrong. This is how it should be"? That feels, to me, extremely arrogant -- it's one thing to criticise a work of art, but another entirely to take it and create something that relies utterly on that first work for its existence and context, yet which denies the basic premise of that first work. It's one thing to read a book that flubs its treatment of prejudice and justice and decide to write a book that doesn't flub them; it's a different thing to essentially rewrite the first book with different themes.
And yet, I am writing Harry Potter fanfiction that creates Slytherin characters whom I hope are understandable and sometimes even sympathetic, and who, if they lived to the climax of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would not have stood by and done nothing. I am writing Naruto fanfiction that attempts to unpick and criticize the ethics of the shinobi system.
I have a terrible feeling I am going to end up writing Narnia fanfiction that attempts to redo The Last Battle with a theology of life instead of a theology of death.
...
*headdesk*
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 07:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 03:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 03:07 am (UTC)Oh, now there's an idea! Yes, I think that would at the least not have felt nearly as objectionable, and might even have been uplifting in a way, whereas the book as written is kind of: and now we come to another difficult time for our brave Narnian protagonists, only instead of helping them, Aslan inexplicably decides the villains haven't gone far enough in their destruction of Narnia, and goes them one better by destroying the whole world! But it's okay because he'll give the nice boys and girls ice cream in his own house. *beats head against wall*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:17 am (UTC)(Personally, I like the image of heaven -- and hell -- given in The Great Divorce better. But then, that's more clearly not intended to be a story, really.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:47 am (UTC)I can see that. Insteaad of explaining that every world has an appointed end and this is the way Narnia's end happens to play out -- and showing the world slowing down -- Lewis just shows the population of the world having turned inexplicably selfish, evil, and ineffective, and then ends everything, assuming that his readers will know that the pervasiveness of evil and the very fact of the world's ending means that Narnia was fated to end then somehow. Which is emphatically not how I took the conclusion of that book!
(Especially since in the Bible, God's reaction to the pervasiveness of evil is only to almost end the world, and then covenant not to do that again. I know, I know, technically he only agrees not to flood the world again, but I always saw that as very weasely and immoral on his part.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:21 am (UTC)Which basically means, to me, that making Lewis' worlds more life-affirming is good; it would be contrary to Lewis to suggest that Narnia is better than Aslan's own country, because for Lewis all our worlds are the shadows cast by the greater reality that is Aslan's country, but where Lewis fails to reflect his core value of love of the Godhead - including as expressed in or through creation - I think you can legitimately re-focus, if that makes sense.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:51 am (UTC)Yes. One cannot say that Narnia is better than heaven, but one can say that Lewis shows (in my view) a shocking disrespect for his deity-figure's handiwork, and for his characters' and readers' love for that handiwork.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 09:01 am (UTC)The author isn't god. The author gets things wrong. No creation is perfect, and even if it were then it wouldn't be perfect for everyone. I think if you feel some themes aren't fully explored or explored in illogical ways, then as a fanfic writer you're perfectly entitled to write it in a way you like better. I didn't read Narnia, so I can't say, but from what you said here, for you then the last book doesn't fit in with the rest. So if it's the rest you like... there's nothing wrong with writing something that's first-six-books compliant and that changes things in book seven. It's not quite "here is what you did wrong and how it should have happened", more like "it didn't work for me".
... Okay, the line is really nonexistent from a certain point of view. *sigh*
Anyway... it's not a crime to write post-book six, whatever your reasons, whether it's because you think the last book doesn't fit, or because you just happen to find more freedom to create if you start from X point in Y book, or just because the bunnies offered Z alternate view to ABC plotlines/scenes. ... I really can't articulate it in a convincing way. ~___~
I think the difference is that Kaori Yuki really treats Christianity as a fun *legend* to deconstruct and reconstruct, and all the canon angel names are good to make fully-fleshed-out OCs out of -- real people who just happens to have names and titles and fantasy powers. Whereas CS Lewis uses the fantasy settings and the characters as vehicles for religious themes. CS Lewis believes. Kaori Yuki is just reworking a story. For her that's pretty much all that the Bible and Christianity is.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 03:46 am (UTC)I think I could even live with 90% of the events in The Last Battle; what really bothers me is the interpretation Lewis wants to force on those events. He wants to make the senseless destruction of the world seem like a good and joyous thing, and I find that abhorrent.
I usually do end up concluding that it's okay to contradict the author's themes in fanfiction. I am just more wary of doing that than of contradicting story events, because for me, themes are deeper, more personal, and... more important isn't quite the right word. More central, maybe? Yeah, that works. So while all stories are inevitably a collaboration between writer and reader (they come to life in the reader's head, after all), I feel simultaneously more vehement and more awkward about points where I stumble over thematic problems than points where I stumble over, say, sloppy characterization, and I mind sloppy characterization more than I mind plot holes.
I think this is because, for me, a story is both a way to pass time and entertain people, and a way to say in words something that can't be said in words. If you screw up the first part, no big deal. If you screw up the second part, that is a big deal, because that's the part that can really get into a person's head and change her understanding of the world.
Argh. I feel inarticulate.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 09:58 am (UTC)I agree with Asuka that it's not arrogant to think an author did it wrong. Easily half of fanfiction is just that, whether it's in shipping ("protagonist/prominent female character 4eva!" "no moar xeroxed Potters: anybody but Ginny!"), theme ("and 15 years later, all the Slytherins' kids are too shamed and loathed to risk Hogwarts enrollment"), or plot. I happen to think, for example, that JKR severely undermined Voldemort's terrifying reign with the prophecy. It simply made sense to me that random violence, not knowing who would be next, would be more terrifying. But many people loved the prophecy because it provided a reason for Harry to be special instead of dead.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 03:56 am (UTC)Of course, I am a member of a religious tradition (Unitarian Universalism) that has one of its major taproots in a complete and utter denial of the theology of Revelations. Universalism's basic tenet is that if God is a god of love, as the Gospels claim, then everyone will be saved. To say otherwise is to deny God's power and compassion. (And Unitarianism's basic tenet is that God is one and therefore Jesus is not divine, which may explain my ease at setting aside Lewis's authorial intention of equating Aslan to Christ and therefore to God, because for me Jesus and God are not and never have been necessarily synonymous.)
Going against canon ships rarely bothers me, so long as there's some justification within the stories. I think this is because I don't get caught up in ships to start with, and I tend to think people can find love with all sorts of people, if they're willing to work at it. So I don't usually think of ships as part of a canon's deeper thematic point, especially if they're treated as trivially as in HP.
I dislike the prophecy not because of its effects on Voldemort's reign of terror, but because I dislike the implicit deterministic view of the universe and the consequent denial of free will and random chance. So I probably would have written that out as well, but for different reasons from yours.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 03:17 pm (UTC)I haven't written any post-DH HP fanfic, but when I do believe you me I won't take on the implicit canon of the final scenes where Not One Slytherin joins the side of light. After all, it contradicts the implicit canon of the Sorting Hat at the beginning of GoF, innit? I know what I'm picking.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 06:11 pm (UTC)If you take a look at the Star Wars fanfom for example, it's a mass of AUs where Vader lives, or didn't fall, or Obi-wan is the chosen one. There's such an extended universe in print already in the form of the books and comics that the fanfic authors are mostly using fanfic to explore the stories they wanted to see.
I think it's our duty as fanfic authors to explore what we wish to, regardless of the author's intent. Because that's all that it is - intent. I, as a reader, have as much right to judge a series as it's author. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm right, or that the author's right, or that there is even a right answer, but the whole point of books or mangas or series is to engage with the text in whatever way you need to. Sometimes I love where an author is going, other times I disagree strongly with half their universe, or just would really like to change one event. Fanfic lets me do what I like with the text, but without threatening the author (Kishimoto doesn't care that I think his plotting abilities suck, and that he can't count above four). I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's fine to be respectful to the text, but a) you don't have to, b) sometimes the text doesn't deserve it, and c) sometimes you have to betray intent to make a point.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:05 am (UTC)That's an interesting point, that authors may get so caught up in their worlds so they lose perspective on the moral themes they're showing. That probably goes a long way toward explaining Rowling's blatant tendency to favoritism in who gets away with what behavior.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 01:09 am (UTC)Well, for one thing, Lewis actually knew what he was talking about, whereas I'm not so sure about Kaori Yuki. (All right, I've never actually read Angel Sanctuary, only Count Cain, so maybe the way she approaches her religious themes is different there, but my impression is definitely that a. She's more interested in the mythology than the theology of the religion, and b. She probably doesn't know what she's talking about half the time anyway. See, uh, I've never actually read the Bible, but I'm still pretty sure that it wasn't Cain who got thrown out of Eden.)
So KY uses a lot of elements out of Christianity, but in a way that strikes me (admittedly in my limited experience) more as a setting than a theme. I mean, if you're going to put religious themes into a book, it can't just be, "This book is about Christianity," you have to actually say something in particular about it. And C. S. Lewis is trying to prove that Christianity is true/good, but even though KY presents the religion in an unflattering light... idk, it still doesn't seem to me that she's saying, "Christianity is wrong," or "Christianity is harmful." ...My impression is more that she's just using the religion as a background for stories that happen to have fucked-up plots.
The main character in Count Cain's father beats him while making him recite Bible verses, but there's no evidence that the religion itself is to blame for this-- it's more just guilt by association. So I guess I'd say I think you're making perfect sense given that KY probably didn't really intend to convince her readers of anything in particular about religion. :/
This is a very interesting post though; I've been wondering about this sort of... thematic canon, I guess?... stuff for a while now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:12 am (UTC)Thematic canon is a good word for what I'm trying to talk about!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 01:30 am (UTC)I have definitely seen fanfiction written in a way that I do think is an insult/attack on the body of work it's based on. Mostly, the ones that bother me are character bashing fics; when the fanfiction author writes a character as stupid, evil or whatever (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterDerailment) simply because s/he dislikes that character and not because there's any canonical reason for the person to be that way, I think that is a much worse betrayal of canon. Character bashing is also, I think, often a result of lazy writing instead of reasoned or insightful critique (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitle3tinj4tz?from=Main.SturgeonsLaw). (I love you, TV Tropes!)
I may be more forgiving of AUs than you are, though. I mean, I love some fics that are very far from what the original canon intended (Smallville/My Little Pony/HP Lovecraft, anyone? (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2834974/1/Ponyville)). But I think they're funny. I'm willing to forgive a fic a lot if it can make me laugh.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-06 04:34 am (UTC)Crack AUs operate under different rules from normal AUs, but while I often find them funny, I don't usually seek them out. I am generally more interested in, as you say, a thoughtful (though not necessarily tonally serious) exploration of and conversation with canon.
warning, this did indeed get rambly.
Date: 2009-05-06 02:14 am (UTC)One thing I have noticed is how much an author's expressed intent plays into my view on their story, on the quality of both the writing and the world-building. If an author prefaces their work by announcing they are deliberately changing an aspect of the content, either the implicit or the explicit, to see how the world would be, I find the outcome much easier to digest. A deliberate alteration and the ripples of change that follow is more interesting to me to read than a story in which the author just doesn't seem to understand a character and mangles their actions and attitudes. Or one who doesn't *like* a character and writes them OOC because of that; such comes across to me as bad writing. Whereas the other, just by a simple explanation of what the premise is, usually makes it more palatable. "I understand the original, but would like to show a road less traveled." "Oh, okay. I'll walk with you a while then, writer."
I guess it's the difference between marginalizing or outright slandering a character versus setting up a dark (or light, or chartreuse) mirror of them so you can see what that reflection looks like. I think a similar metaphor can be drawn for aspects of the plot as well, but as you pointed out, plot follows characterization. Hell, that's why I have AU's to my own AU fanfic. One road is never enough, but it's all we get in life; fanfic is the one place you get to travel them all.
I also think sometimes that some writers of fic do so not only to explore the world but to come to terms with what happens in it, and the further you push an AU, the more catharsis you get from it. Especially if the original material had an aspect that offended you, for whatever reason. (One of the main reasons I started writing Naruto fanfic was that we have this great supporting cast that wind up almost completely fading into the background for months at a time, and I was interested in what they were up to while the camera is, say, focusing on Naruto staring at his hand for a month.
And then all the little what-ifs I was contemplating (both in the main and supporting casts, the plots, and the politics of a ninja world) merged together one day while my back was turned, and now I have an entire Naruto ficworld.)
And I think explaining the genesis of one's work up front- the gist of it, not what led to every little altered detail- would go a long way into helping the readership understand what the world is by understanding how it came to be. I mean, there is a lot of stuff that I do in my own work that would totally cross my eyes if I read it in somebody else's work, and in realizing that, it makes me aware that I ought to include something that hopefully helps the reader to uncross their brain if they have that reaction to any of my work.
warning: I am tired and may be less than coherent in my reply!
Date: 2009-05-06 05:04 am (UTC)I sometimes wish I were the kind of writer who could be happy writing nothing but shipfic, because I think it's easier for them (and I know I am generalizing shamefully) to focus on squee and not get tangled up in ethics and morals and the overal thematic thrust of a series. And yes, it's very true that the further you push an AU the more it deals with your own thematic preoccupations and the less it may deal with canon themes... which does present problems of its own. (For example, I occasionally regret not finding a way to file the serial numbers off "The Way of the Apartment Manager" so I could have written "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" as original fiction rather than trying to keep my story connected enough to canon that I won't lose people when I start arguing that Konoha is, in many ways, ethically bankrupt... even the 'good' guys. Then again, there wouldn't be much point in arguing that Konoha is ethically bankrupt if I were writing original fiction, would there? *sigh*)
Re: warning: ditto
Date: 2009-05-06 05:39 am (UTC)[Those Other Problems] Yeah. In the stuff I write, it's not just my view on the ethics/politics/history of the place I get hung up on; I tend to get just as interested in the original characters as the canon ones. There's stuff I've done that *has* moved away from canon plots to the point of being original except for the setting- and sometimes not even that. But if you remove it from the overall context of that world, even if the canon cities and people aren't visible, it just loses its significance. Sure, the characters could stand on their own, but cutting away their origination is like...well, I'm too tired to think of a good metaphor. Something like trying to press an original sculpture into a standard mold. Where you were born and how you are raised makes a lot of a person's character in the real world, and it's equally as relevant for a fictional person.
I've enjoyed both (well, pretty much all) of your stories immensely, as much for the quality of writing as for the plot, but if "The Way" and "The Guardian" weren't another look at the world of Naruto, a place with characters I am already familiar with, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed them quite as much. At the very least, knowing something is intended as a continuation/alternate look at a series I already enjoy is a hook that a flat-out original world doesn't have.
And exactly- because if it was original, it wouldn't be Konoha. And then people would be like, "Well she's the author, she can make it whatever she wants" and you'd no longer have the standard view of the place as the counterpoint to the point you're making. We know Konoha, and if we like walking in its Shadows better than the original, well, we wouldn't have those Shadows without the original. And on that reference, which I'm not entirely sure works but which I'm going to let stand due to the lateness of the hour and because dammit, I love the first chronicles of Amber, I'm going to bed.
Re: warning: ditto
Date: 2009-05-06 07:46 pm (UTC)And exactly- because if it was original, it wouldn't be Konoha. And then people would be like, "Well she's the author, she can make it whatever she wants" and you'd no longer have the standard view of the place as the counterpoint to the point you're making. We know Konoha, and if we like walking in its Shadows better than the original, well, we wouldn't have those Shadows without the original.
True! That sense of conversation -- both with the original canon and with other fans of that canon -- is probably my favorite thing about fanfiction. And it's something you can't get writing original fiction, unless you're reworking a legend (like King Arthur), retelling a fairy-tale (such as Beauty and the Beast), or riffing on religious mythology.